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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27788941">If ACD Created Molly Hooper</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Girlysword/pseuds/Girlysword'>Girlysword</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>If ACD Created Molly Hooper [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes &amp; Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Drug Use, F/M, Jealous Sherlock, Mary Lives, Matchmaking, Period Typical Attitudes, Reconciliation, Romance, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, fake infidelity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:13:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>144,141</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27788941</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Girlysword/pseuds/Girlysword</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They say you write what you want to read, and I wanted to read the ACD Sherlock stories, except with Molly Hooper in them (Only what Watson writes for the in-universe audience. If any of you want to write the behind-the-scenes of these stories please let me know so I can read them!)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>If ACD Created Molly Hooper [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050659</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Sign of Four</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.<br/>
Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.<br/>
Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.<br/>
“Which is it to-day?” I asked,—“morphine or cocaine?”<br/>
He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. “It is cocaine,” he said,—“a seven-per-cent. solution. Would you care to try it?”<br/>
“No, indeed,” I answered, brusquely. “My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it.”<br/>
He smiled at my vehemence. “Perhaps you are right, Watson,” he said. “I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.”<br/>
“But consider!” I said, earnestly. “Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable.”<br/>
Holmes had opened his mouth to reply to this tirade, when with a crisp knock our landlady entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver.<br/>
“A young lady for you, sir,” she said, addressing my companion.<br/>
“Miss Mary Morstan,” he read. “Hum! I have no recollection of the name. Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson. Don’t go, doctor. I should prefer that you remain.”<br/>
Miss Morstan entered the room with a firm step and a companion a few years younger than herself. Miss Morstan was a blonde and blue-eyed young lady, almost of a height with myself and dressed in the most perfect taste, though a plainness and simplicity which bore a suggestion of limited means. Her companion was a petite young lady with brown eyes and hair and she was dressed in attire that suggested she had greater mean than Miss Morstan and a unique taste. It was clear she was excited; indeed, it was later confirmed that she had read “A Study in Scarlet” and wanted to meet the great Sherlock Holmes. In an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never met two such exceptional women. Indeed, I have blessed every day since.<br/>
Holmes ushered the two ladies to a seat, “Welcome Miss Morstan,” then turning to her companion, “Miss Hope.”<br/>
Miss Hope smiled at having gotten what she came for so soon, “How did you know my name was Hope? Indeed, how did you know I wasn’t Miss Morstan?”<br/>
“I have met your father and you resemble him greatly.”<br/>
“Oh,” I must admit I was amused at her disappointment.<br/>
“I have come to you, Mr. Holmes,” Miss Morstan spoke now, fighting her own amused smile, “because you once enabled my employer, The Baroness, Lady Hope, before her marriage. She was much impressed by your kindness and skill.”<br/>
“I believe that I was of some slight service to her. The case, however, as I remember it, was a very simple one.”<br/>
“She did not think so. But at least you cannot say the same of mine. I can hardly imagine anything more strange, more utterly inexplicable, than the situation in which I find myself.”<br/>
Holmes rubbed his hands, and his eyes glistened. He leaned forward in his chair with an expression of extraordinary concentration upon his clear-cut, hawklike features. “State your case,” said he, in brisk, business tones.<br/>
I felt that my position was an embarrassing one. “You will, I am sure, excuse me,” I said, rising from my chair.<br/>
To my surprise, the young lady held up her gloved hand to detain me. “If your friend,” she said, “would be good enough to stop, he might be of inestimable service to me.”<br/>
I relapsed into my chair.<br/>
“Briefly,” she continued, her face much more serious now, “the facts are these. My father was an officer in an Indian regiment who sent me home when I was quite a child. My mother was dead, and I had no relative in England. I was placed, however, in a comfortable boarding establishment at Edinburgh, and there I remained until I was seventeen years of age. In the year 1878 my father, who was senior captain of his regiment, obtained twelve months’ leave and came home. He telegraphed to me from London that he had arrived all safe, and directed me to come down at once, giving the Langham Hotel as his address. His message, as I remember, was full of kindness and love. On reaching London I drove to the Langham, and was informed that Captain Morstan was staying there, but that he had gone out the night before and had not yet returned. I waited all day without news of him. That night, on the advice of the manager of the hotel, I communicated with the police, and next morning we advertised in all the papers. Our inquiries led to no result; and from that day to this no word has ever been heard of my unfortunate father. He came home with his heart full of hope, to find some peace, some comfort, and instead—” She put her hand to her throat, a choking sob cut short the sentence, and she leaned into Miss Hope for comfort.<br/>
“The date?” asked Holmes, opening his note-book.<br/>
“He disappeared upon the 3rd of December, 1878, —nearly ten years ago.”<br/>
“His luggage?”<br/>
“Remained at the hotel. There was nothing in it to suggest a clue, —some clothes, some books, and a considerable number of curiosities from the Andaman Islands. He had been one of the officers in charge of the convict-guard there.”<br/>
“Had he any friends in town?”<br/>
“Only one that we know of, —Major Sholto, of his own regiment, the 34th Bombay Infantry. The major had retired some little time before, and lived at Upper Norwood. We communicated with him, of course, but he did not even know that his brother officer was in England.”<br/>
“A singular case,” remarked Holmes.<br/>
“I have not yet described to you the most singular part. About six years ago—to be exact, upon the 4th of May, 1882—an advertisement appeared in the Times asking for the address of Miss Mary Morstan and stating that it would be to her advantage to come forward. There was no name or address appended. I had at that time just entered the family of Lord and Lady Hope in the capacity of governess. By Moll-Miss Hope’s advice I published my address in the advertisement column. The same day there arrived through the post a small card-board box addressed to me, which I found to contain a very large and lustrous pearl. No word of writing was enclosed. Since then every year upon the same date there has always appeared a similar box, containing a similar pearl, without any clue as to the sender. They have been pronounced by an expert to be of a rare variety and of considerable value. You can see for yourselves that they are very handsome.” She opened a flat box as she spoke, and showed me six of the finest pearls that I had ever seen.<br/>
“Your statement is most interesting,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Has anything else occurred to you?”<br/>
“Yes, and no later than to-day. That is why I have come to you. This morning I received this letter, which you will perhaps read for yourself.”<br/>
“Thank you,” said Holmes. “The envelope too, please. Postmark, London, S.W. Date, July 7. Hum! Man’s thumb-mark on corner, —probably postman. Best quality paper. Envelopes at sixpence a packet. Particular man in his stationery. No address. ‘Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre to-night at seven o’clock. If you are distrustful, bring friends. You are a wronged woman, and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your unknown friend.’ Well, really, this is a very pretty little mystery. What do you intend to do, Miss Morstan?”<br/>
“That is exactly what I want to ask you.”<br/>
“Then we shall most certainly go. You and I and—yes, why, Dr. Watson is the very man. Your correspondent says friends. He and I have worked together before.”<br/>
“But would he come?” she asked, with something appealing in her voice and expression.<br/>
“I should be proud and happy,” said I, fervently, “if I can be of any service.”<br/>
“You are both very kind,” she answered. “I have led a retired life, and Miss Hope is the only friend whom I could appeal to. If we are here at six it will do, I suppose?”<br/>
“You must not be later,” said Holmes. “There is one other point, however. Is this handwriting the same as that upon the pearl-box addresses?”<br/>
“I have them here,” she answered, producing half a dozen pieces of paper.<br/>
“You are certainly a model client. You have the correct intuition. Let us see, now.” He spread out the papers upon the table, and gave little darting glances from one to the other. “They are disguised hands, except the letter,” he said, presently, “but there can be no question as to the authorship. See how the irrepressible Greek e will break out, and see the twirl of the final s. They are undoubtedly by the same person. I should not like to suggest false hopes, Miss Morstan, but is there any resemblance between this hand and that of your father?”<br/>
“Nothing could be more unlike.”<br/>
“I expected to hear you say so. We shall look out for you, then, at six. Pray allow me to keep the papers. I may look into the matter before then. It is only half-past three. Au revoir, then.”<br/>
“Au revoir,” said our visitors, and, with a bright, kindly glance from one to the other of us, Miss Morstan replaced her pearl-box in her bosom and hurried away. I noticed Miss Hope sneak a final glance in Mr. Holmes’s direction.<br/>
“What a very attractive woman!” I exclaimed, then, realizing I had spoken aloud, I added, “Both of them.”<br/>
He had lit his pipe again, and was leaning back with drooping eyelids. “Were they?” he said, languidly. “I did not observe.”<br/>
“You really are an automaton, —a calculating-machine!” I cried. “There is something positively inhuman in you at times.”<br/>
He smiled gently. “It is of the first importance,” he said, “not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, —a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.”<br/>
“In this case, however—”<br/>
“I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule. Have you ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make of this fellow’s scribble?”<br/>
“It is legible and regular,” I answered, allowing the change in subject. “A man of business habits and some force of character.”<br/>
Holmes shook his head. “Look at his long letters,” he said. “They hardly rise above the common herd. That d might be an a, and that l an e. Men of character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly they may write. There is vacillation in his k’s and self-esteem in his capitals. I am going out now. I have some few references to make. I shall be back in an hour.”<br/>
I sat in the window with a volume in my hand, but my thoughts were far from the daring speculations of the writer. My mind ran upon our late visitor, —her smiles, the deep rich tones of her voice, the strange mystery which overhung her life. If she were seventeen at the time of her father’s disappearance, she must be seven-and-twenty now, —a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience. So, I sat and mused, until such dangerous thoughts came into my head that I hurried away to my desk and plunged furiously into the latest treatise upon pathology. What was I, an army surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking-account, that I should dare to think of such things? She was a unit, a factor, —nothing more. If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Molly "Hope" Hooper backstory: She is the natural daughter of a baron. I wrote this in so that Molly would be in a similar position to Mary Morstan. Being a governess could be a lonely existence. As a gentlewoman it wouldn't be proper for her to socialize with the downstairs people, but as an employee the family wasn't obligated to engage with her socially. Being an illegitimate child in the Victorian era could be a horrifying existence, unless you were recognized by your father. The natural children of the wealthy, particularly the nobility could live very comfortable lives, but were unable to inherit. So Molly and Mary both exist in this in-between space in society. (I chose for Molly's father to be a baron, because an inherited title would still make him a desirable match despite openly raising an illegitimate daughter)<br/>Molly's age: Old enough to be flirting with spinsterhood, but young enough that (in Watson's eyes at least) it's still okay for her to be naïve.<br/>Molly's "unique" fashion sense: Being fashionable didn't mean the same thing historically that it does today. (Please watch this video as she explains it better than I ever could https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVNOyBRZXkw&amp;t=242s) So since Molly has had a social stain on her since birth, she basically went, "Screw it, I'm dressing how I want."</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. In Quest of a Solution</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, and in excellent spirits, —a mood which in his case alternated with fits of the blackest depression.<br/>“There is no great mystery in this matter,” he said, taking the cup of tea which, I had poured out for him. “The facts appear to admit of only one explanation.”<br/>“What! you have solved it already?”<br/>“Well, that would be too much to say. I have discovered a suggestive fact, that is all. It is, however, very suggestive. The details are still to be added. I have just found, on consulting the back files of the Times, that Major Sholto, of Upper Norword, late of the 34th Bombay Infantry, died upon the 28th of April, 1882.”<br/>“I may be very obtuse, Holmes, but I fail to see what this suggests.”<br/>“No? You surprise me. Look at it in this way, then. Captain Morstan disappears. The only person in London whom he could have visited is Major Sholto. Major Sholto denies having heard that he was in London. Four years later Sholto dies. Within a week of his death Captain Morstan’s daughter receives a valuable present, which is repeated from year to year, and now culminates in a letter which describes her as a wronged woman. What wrong can it refer to except this deprivation of her father? And why should the presents begin immediately after Sholto’s death, unless it is that Sholto’s heir knows something of the mystery and desires to make compensation? Have you any alternative theory which will meet the facts?”<br/>“But what a strange compensation! And how strangely made! Why, too, should he write a letter now, rather than six years ago? Again, the letter speaks of giving her justice. What justice can she have? It is too much to suppose that her father is still alive. There is no other injustice in her case that you know of.”<br/>“There are difficulties; there are certainly difficulties,” said Sherlock Holmes, pensively. “But our expedition of to-night will solve them all. Ah, here is a four-wheeler, with Miss Morstan and Miss Hope inside. Are you all ready? Then we had better go down, for it is a little past the hour.”<br/>I picked up my hat and my heaviest stick, but I observed that Holmes took his revolver from his drawer and slipped it into his pocket. It was clear that he thought that our night’s work might be a serious one.<br/>Miss Morstan was muffled in a dark cloak, and her sensitive face was composed, but pale. She must have been more than woman if she did not feel some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were embarking, yet her self-control was perfect, and she readily answered the few additional questions which Sherlock Holmes put to her.<br/>“Major Sholto was a very particular friend of papa’s,” she said. “His letters were full of allusions to the major. He and papa were in command of the troops at the Andaman Islands, so they were thrown a great deal together. By the way, a curious paper was found in papa’s desk which no one could understand. I don’t suppose that it is of the slightest importance, but I thought you might care to see it, so I brought it with me. It is here.”<br/>Holmes unfolded the paper carefully and smoothed it out upon his knee. He then very methodically examined it all over with his double lens.<br/>“It is paper of native Indian manufacture,” he remarked. “It has at some time been pinned to a board. The diagram upon it appears to be a plan of part of a large building with numerous halls, corridors, and passages. At one point is a small cross done in red ink, and above it is ‘3.37 from left,’ in faded pencil-writing. In the left-hand corner is a curious hieroglyphic like four crosses in a line with their arms touching. Beside it is written, in very rough and coarse characters, ‘The sign of the four, —Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, Dost Akbar.’ No, I confess that I do not see how this bears upon the matter. Yet it is evidently a document of importance. It has been kept carefully in a pocket-book; for the one side is as clean as the other.”<br/>“It was in his pocket-book that we found it.”<br/>“Preserve it carefully, then, Miss Morstan, for it may prove to be of use to us. I begin to suspect that this matter may turn out to be much deeper and more subtle than I at first supposed. I must reconsider my ideas.” He leaned back in the cab, and I could see by his drawn brow and his vacant eye that he was thinking intently. Miss Morstan and I chatted in an undertone about our present expedition and its possible outcome, but our companion maintained his impenetrable reserve until the end of our journey. He held his open note-book upon his knee, and from time to time he jotted down figures and memoranda in the light of his pocket-lantern. Miss Hope joined in the conversation between Miss Morstan and I every so often, but her attention was mostly preoccupied with gazing out the cab’s window and at Mr. Holmes in turns. Miss Morstan noticed that as well and shared a smile with me.<br/>It was a September evening, and not yet seven o’clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light, —sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more.<br/>At the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the side-entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and four-wheelers were rattling up, discharging their cargoes of shirt-fronted men and beshawled, bediamonded women. We had hardly reached the third pillar, which was our rendezvous, before a small, dark, brisk man in the dress of a coachman accosted us.<br/>“Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?” he asked.<br/>“I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends,” said she.<br/>He bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes upon us. “You will excuse me, miss,” he said with a certain dogged manner, “but I was to ask you to give me your word that none of your companions is a police-officer.”<br/>“I give you my word on that,” she answered.<br/>He gave a shrill whistle, on which a street Arab led across a four-wheeler and opened the door. The man who had addressed us mounted to the box, while we took our places inside. We had hardly done so before the driver whipped up his horse, and we plunged away at a furious pace through the foggy streets.<br/>The situation was a curious one. We were driving to an unknown place, on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete hoax, —which was an inconceivable hypothesis, —or else we had good reason to think that important issues might hang upon our journey. I endeavored to cheer and amuse Miss Morstan and Miss Hope by reminiscences of my adventures in Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at our situation and so curious as to our destination that my stories were slightly involved. To this day it is declared that I told one moving anecdote as to how a musket looked into my tent at the dead of night, and how I fired a double-barreled tiger cub at it. At first, I had some idea as to the direction in which we were driving; but soon, what with our pace, the fog, and my own limited knowledge of London, I lost my bearings, and knew nothing, save that we seemed to be going a very long way. Sherlock Holmes was never at fault, however, and he muttered the names as the cab rattled through squares and in and out by tortuous by-streets.<br/>“Rochester Row,” said he. “Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side, apparently. Yes, I thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch glimpses of the river.”<br/>We did indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames with the lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on, and was soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon the other side.<br/>“Wordsworth Road,” said my companion. “Priory Road. Lark Hall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbor Lane. Our quest does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions.”<br/>We had, indeed, reached a questionable and forbidding neighbourhood. Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare and tawdry brilliancy of public houses at the corner. Then came rows of two-storied villas each with a fronting of miniature garden, and then again interminable lines of new staring brick buildings, —the monster tentacles which the giant city was throwing out into the country. At last the cab drew up at the third house in a new terrace. None of the other houses were inhabited, and that at which we stopped was as dark as its neighbours, save for a single glimmer in the kitchen window. On our knocking, however, the door was instantly thrown open by a Hindoo servant clad in a yellow turban, white loose-fitting clothes, and a yellow sash. There was something strangely incongruous in this Oriental figure framed in the commonplace doorway of a third-rate suburban dwelling-house.<br/>“The Sahib awaits you,” said he, and even as he spoke there came a high piping voice from some inner room. “Show them in to me, khitmutgar,” it cried. “Show them straight in to me.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Story of the Bald-Headed Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>We followed the Indian down a sordid and common passage, ill-lit and worse furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he threw open. A blaze of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the centre of the glare there stood a small man with a very high head, a bristle of red hair all-round the fringe of it, and a bald, shining scalp which shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees. He writhed his hands together as he stood, and his features were in a perpetual jerk, now smiling, now scowling, but never for an instant in repose. Nature had given him a pendulous lip, and a too visible line of yellow and irregular teeth, which he strove feebly to conceal by constantly passing his hand over the lower part of his face. In spite of his obtrusive baldness, he gave the impression of youth. In point of fact he had just turned his thirtieth year.<br/>“Your servant, Miss Morstan,” he kept repeating, in a thin, high voice, after confirming which of the ladies was Miss Morstan. “Your servant, Miss Hope, gentlemen. Pray step into my little sanctum. A small place, but furnished to my own liking. An oasis of art in the howling desert of South London.”<br/>We were all astonished by the appearance of the apartment into which he invited us. In that sorry house it looked as out of place as a diamond of the first water in a setting of brass. The richest and glossiest of curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back here and there to expose some richly-mounted painting or Oriental vase. The carpet was of amber-and-black, so soft and so thick that the foot sank pleasantly into it, as into a bed of moss. Two great tiger-skins thrown athwart it increased the suggestion of Eastern luxury, as did a huge hookah which stood upon a mat in the corner. A lamp in the fashion of a silver dove was hung from an almost invisible golden wire in the centre of the room. As it burned it filled the air with a subtle and aromatic odour.<br/>“Mr. Thaddeus Sholto,” said the little man, still jerking and smiling. “That is my name. You are Miss Morstan, of course. Miss Hope has already introduced herself. And these gentlemen—”<br/>“This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and this is Dr. Watson.”<br/>“A doctor, eh?” cried he, much excited. “Have you your stethoscope? Might I ask you—would you have the kindness? I have grave doubts as to my mitral valve, if you would be so very good. The aortic I may rely upon, but I should value your opinion upon the mitral.”<br/>I listened to his heart, as requested, but was unable to find anything amiss, save indeed that he was in an ecstasy of fear, for he shivered from head to foot. “It appears to be normal,” I said. “You have no cause for uneasiness.”<br/>“You will excuse my anxiety, Miss Morstan,” he remarked, airily. “I am a great sufferer, and I have long had suspicions as to that valve. I am delighted to hear that they are unwarranted. Had your father, Miss Morstan, refrained from throwing a strain upon his heart, he might have been alive now.”<br/>I could have struck the man across the face, so hot was I at this callous and off-hand reference to so delicate a matter. Miss Morstan sat down, and her face grew white to the lips. “I knew in my heart that he was dead,” said she into Miss Hope’s shoulder.<br/>“I can give you every information,” said he, “and, what is more, I can do you justice; and I will, too, whatever Brother Bartholomew may say. I am so glad to have your friends here, not only as an escort to you, but also as witnesses to what I am about to do and say. The four of us can show a bold front to Brother Bartholomew. But let us have no outsiders, —no police or officials. We can settle everything satisfactorily among ourselves, without any interference. Nothing would annoy Brother Bartholomew more than any publicity.” He sat down upon a low settee and blinked at us inquiringly with his weak, watery blue eyes.<br/>“For my part,” said Holmes, “whatever you may choose to say will go no further.”<br/>I nodded to show my agreement.<br/>“That is well! That is well!” said he. “May I offer you a glass of Chianti, Miss Morstan? Or of Tokay? I keep no other wines. Shall I open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the mild balsamic odour of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative.” He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semi-circle, with our heads advanced, and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in the centre.<br/>“When I first determined to make this communication to you,” said he, “I might have given you my address, but I feared that you might disregard my request and bring unpleasant people with you. I took the liberty, therefore, of making an appointment in such a way that my man Williams might be able to see you first. I have complete confidence in his discretion, and he had orders, if he were dissatisfied, to proceed no further in the matter. You will excuse these precautions, but I am a man of somewhat retiring, and I might even say refined, tastes, and there is nothing more unæsthetic than a policeman. I have a natural shrinking from all forms of rough materialism. I seldom come in contact with the rough crowd. I live, as you see, with some little atmosphere of elegance around me. I may call myself a patron of the arts. It is my weakness. The landscape is a genuine Corot, and, though a connoisseur might perhaps throw a doubt upon that Salvator Rosa, there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school.”<br/>“You will excuse me, Mr. Sholto,” said Miss Morstan, “but I am here at your request to learn something which you desire to tell me. It is very late, and I should desire the interview to be as short as possible.”<br/>“At the best it must take some time,” he answered; “for we shall certainly have to go to Norwood and see Brother Bartholomew. We shall all go and try if we can get the better of Brother Bartholomew. He is very angry with me for taking the course which has seemed right to me. I had quite high words with him last night. You cannot imagine what a terrible fellow he is when he is angry.”<br/>“If we are to go to Norwood it would perhaps be as well to start at once,” I ventured to remark.<br/>He laughed until his ears were quite red. “That would hardly do,” he cried. “I don’t know what he would say if I brought you in that sudden way. No, I must prepare you by showing you how we all stand to each other. In the first place, I must tell you that there are several points in the story of which I am myself ignorant. I can only lay the facts before you as far as I know them myself.<br/>“My father was, as you may have guessed, Major John Sholto, once of the Indian army. He retired some eleven years ago, and came to live at Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood. He had prospered in India, and brought back with him a considerable sum of money, a large collection of valuable curiosities, and a staff of native servants. With these advantages he bought himself a house, and lived in great luxury. My twin-brother Bartholomew and I were the only children.<br/>“I very well remember the sensation which was caused by the disappearance of Captain Morstan. We read the details in the papers, and, knowing that he had been a friend of our father’s, we discussed the case freely in his presence. He used to join in our speculations as to what could have happened. Never for an instant did we suspect that he had the whole secret hidden in his own breast, —that of all men he alone knew the fate of Arthur Morstan.<br/>“We did know, however, that some mystery—some positive danger—overhung our father. He was very fearful of going out alone, and he always employed two prize-fighters to act as porters at Pondicherry Lodge. Williams, who drove you to-night, was one of them. He was once light-weight champion of England. Our father would never tell us what it was he feared, but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden legs. On one occasion he actually fired his revolver at a wooden-legged man, who proved to be a harmless tradesman canvassing for orders. We had to pay a large sum to hush the matter up. My brother and I used to think this a mere whim of my father’s, but events have since led us to change our opinion.<br/>“Early in 1882 my father received a letter from India which was a great shock to him. He nearly fainted at the breakfast-table when he opened it, and from that day he sickened to his death. What was in the letter we could never discover, but I could see as he held it that it was short and written in a scrawling hand. He had suffered for years from an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and towards the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope, and that he wished to make a last communication to us.<br/>“When we entered his room, he was propped up with pillows and breathing heavily. He besought us to lock the door and to come upon either side of the bed. Then, grasping our hands, he made a remarkable statement to us, in a voice which was broken as much by emotion as by pain. I shall try and give it to you in his own very words.<br/>“‘I have only one thing,’ he said, ‘which weighs upon my mind at this supreme moment. It is my treatment of poor Morstan’s orphan. The cursed greed which has been my besetting sin through life has withheld from her the treasure, half at least of which should have been hers. And yet I have made no use of it myself, —so blind and foolish a thing is avarice. The mere feeling of possession has been so dear to me that I could not bear to share it with another. See that chaplet dipped with pearls beside the quinine-bottle. Even that I could not bear to part with, although I had got it out with the design of sending it to her. You, my sons, will give her a fair share of the Agra treasure. But send her nothing—not even the chaplet—until I am gone. After all, men have been as bad as this and have recovered.<br/>“‘I will tell you how Morstan died,’ he continued. ‘He had suffered for years from a weak heart, but he concealed it from everyone. I alone knew it. When in India, he and I, through a remarkable chain of circumstances, came into possession of a considerable treasure. I brought it over to England, and on the night of Morstan’s arrival he came straight over here to claim his share. He walked over from the station, and was admitted by my faithful old Lal Chowdar, who is now dead. Morstan and I had a difference of opinion as to the division of the treasure, and we came to heated words. Morstan had sprung out of his chair in a paroxysm of anger, when he suddenly pressed his hand to his side, his face turned a dusky hue, and he fell backwards, cutting his head against the corner of the treasure-chest. When I stooped over him, I found, to my horror, that he was dead.<br/>“‘For a long time, I sat half distracted, wondering what I should do. My first impulse was, of course, to call for assistance; but I could not but recognise that there was every chance that I would be accused of his murder. His death at the moment of a quarrel, and the gash in his head, would be black against me. Again, an official inquiry could not be made without bringing out some facts about the treasure, which I was particularly anxious to keep secret. He had told me that no soul upon earth knew where he had gone. There seemed to be no necessity why any soul ever should know.<br/>“‘I was still pondering over the matter, when, looking up, I saw my servant, Lal Chowdar, in the doorway. He stole in and bolted the door behind him. “Do not fear, Sahib,” he said. “No one need know that you have killed him. Let us hide him away, and who is the wiser?” “I did not kill him,” said I. Lal Chowdar shook his head and smiled. “I heard it all, Sahib,” said he. “I heard you quarrel, and I heard the blow. But my lips are sealed. All are asleep in the house. Let us put him away together.” That was enough to decide me. If my own servant could not believe my innocence, how could I hope to make it good before twelve foolish tradesmen in a jury-box? Lal Chowdar and I disposed of the body that night, and within a few days the London papers were full of the mysterious disappearance of Captain Morstan. You will see from what I say that I can hardly be blamed in the matter. My fault lies in the fact that we concealed not only the body, but also the treasure, and that I have clung to Morstan’s share as well as to my own. I wish you, therefore, to make restitution. Put your ears down to my mouth. The treasure is hidden in—’<br/>“At this instant a horrible change came over his expression; his eyes stared wildly, his jaw dropped, and he yelled, in a voice which I can never forget, ‘Keep him out! For Christ’s sake keep him out!’ We both stared round at the window behind us upon which his gaze was fixed. A face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see the whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It was a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence. My brother and I rushed towards the window, but the man was gone. When we returned to my father his head had dropped and his pulse had ceased to beat.<br/>“We searched the garden that night, but found no sign of the intruder, save that just under the window a single footmark was visible in the flower-bed. But for that one trace, we might have thought that our imaginations had conjured up that wild, fierce face. We soon, however, had another and a more striking proof that there were secret agencies at work all round us. The window of my father’s room was found open in the morning, his cupboards and boxes had been rifled, and upon his chest was fixed a torn piece of paper, with the words ‘The sign of the four’ scrawled across it. What the phrase meant, or who our secret visitor may have been, we never knew. As far as we can judge, none of my father’s property had been actually stolen, though everything had been turned out. My brother and I naturally associated this peculiar incident with the fear which haunted my father during his life; but it is still a complete mystery to us.”<br/>The little man stopped to relight his hookah and puffed thoughtfully for a few moments. We had all sat absorbed, listening to his extraordinary narrative. At the short account of her father’s death Miss Morstan had turned deadly white, and for a moment I feared that she was about to faint. She rallied however, on drinking a glass of water which I quietly poured out for her from a Venetian carafe upon the side-table. Miss Hope, usually so quick to comfort her dear friend, was completely absorbed in the story and had failed to notice. Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair with an abstracted expression and the lids drawn low over his glittering eyes. As I glanced at him I could not but think how on that very day he had complained bitterly of the commonplaceness of life. Here at least was a problem which would tax his sagacity to the utmost. Mr. Thaddeus Sholto looked from one to the other of us with an obvious pride at the effect which his story had produced, and then continued between the puffs of his overgrown pipe.<br/>“My brother and I,” said he, “were, as you may imagine, much excited as to the treasure which my father had spoken of. For weeks and for months we dug and delved in every part of the garden, without discovering its whereabouts. It was maddening to think that the hiding-place was on his very lips at the moment that he died. We could judge the splendour of the missing riches by the chaplet which he had taken out. Over this chaplet my brother Bartholomew and I had some little discussion. The pearls were evidently of great value, and he was averse to part with them, for, between friends, my brother was himself a little inclined to my father’s fault. He thought, too, that if we parted with the chaplet it might give rise to gossip and finally bring us into trouble. It was all that I could do to persuade him to let me find out Miss Morstan’s address and send her a detached pearl at fixed intervals, so that at least she might never feel destitute.”<br/>“It was a kindly thought,” said she, earnestly. “It was extremely good of you.”<br/>The little man waved his hand deprecatingly. “We were your trustees,” he said. “That was the view which I took of it, though Brother Bartholomew could not altogether see it in that light. We had plenty of money ourselves. I desired no more. Besides, it would have been such bad taste to have treated a young lady in so scurvy a fashion. ‘Le mauvais goût mène au crime.’ The French have a very neat way of putting these things. Our difference of opinion on this subject went so far that I thought it best to set up rooms for myself: so, I left Pondicherry Lodge, taking the old khitmutgar and Williams with me. Yesterday, however, I learn that an event of extreme importance has occurred. The treasure has been discovered. I instantly communicated with Miss Morstan, and it only remains for us to drive out to Norwood and demand our share. I explained my views last night to Brother Bartholomew: so, we shall be expected, if not welcome, visitors.”<br/>Mr. Thaddeus Sholto ceased, and sat twitching on his luxurious settee. We all remained silent, with our thoughts upon the new development which the mysterious business had taken. Holmes was the first to spring to his feet.<br/>“You have done well, sir, from first to last,” said he. “It is possible that we may be able to make you some small return by throwing some light upon that which is still dark to you. But, as Miss Morstan remarked just now, it is late, and we had best put the matter through without delay.”<br/>Our new acquaintance very deliberately coiled up the tube of his hookah, and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged topcoat with Astrakhan collar and cuffs. This he buttoned tightly up, in spite of the extreme closeness of the night, and finished his attire by putting on a rabbit-skin cap with hanging lappets which covered the ears, so that no part of him was visible save his mobile and peaky face. “My health is somewhat fragile,” he remarked, as he led the way down the passage. “I am compelled to be a valetudinarian.”<br/>Our cab was awaiting us outside, and our programme was evidently prearranged, for the driver started off at once at a rapid pace. Thaddeus Sholto talked incessantly, in a voice which rose high above the rattle of the wheels.<br/>“Bartholomew is a clever fellow,” said he. “How do you think he found out where the treasure was? He had come to the conclusion that it was somewhere indoors: so, he worked out all the cubic space of the house, and made measurements everywhere, so that not one inch should be unaccounted for. Among other things, he found that the height of the building was seventy-four feet, but on adding together the heights of all the separate rooms, and making every allowance for the space between, which he ascertained by borings, he could not bring the total to more than seventy feet. There were four feet unaccounted for. These could only be at the top of the building. He knocked a hole, therefore, in the lath-and-plaster ceiling of the highest room, and there, sure enough, he came upon another little garret above it, which had been sealed up and was known to no one. In the centre stood the treasure-chest, resting upon two rafters. He lowered it through the hole, and there it lies. He computes the value of the jewels at not less than half a million sterling.”<br/>At the mention of this gigantic sum we all stared at one another open-eyed. Miss Morstan, could we secure her rights, would change from a needy governess to the richest heiress in England. Surely it was the place of a loyal friend to rejoice at such news, as Miss Hope clearly did; yet I am ashamed to say that selfishness took me by the soul, and that my heart turned as heavy as lead within me. I stammered out some few halting words of congratulation, and then sat downcast, with my head drooped, deaf to the babble of our new acquaintance. He was clearly a confirmed hypochondriac, and I was dreamily conscious that he was pouring forth interminable trains of symptoms, and imploring information as to the composition and action of innumerable quack nostrums, some of which he bore about in a leather case in his pocket. I trust that he may not remember any of the answers which I gave him that night. Holmes declares that he overheard me caution him against the great danger of taking more than two drops of castor oil, while I recommended strychnine in large doses as a sedative. However, that may be, I was certainly relieved when our cab pulled up with a jerk and the coachman sprang down to open the door.<br/>“This, Miss Morstan, is Pondicherry Lodge,” said Mr. Thaddeus Sholto, as he handed her out.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge</h2></a>
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    <p>It was nearly eleven o’clock when we reached this final stage of our night’s adventures. We had left the damp fog of the great city behind us, and the night was fairly fine. A warm wind blew from the westward, and heavy clouds moved slowly across the sky, with half a moon peeping occasionally through the rifts. It was clear enough to see for some distance, but Thaddeus Sholto took down one of the side-lamps from the carriage to give us a better light upon our way.<br/>Pondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds, and was girt round with a very high stone wall topped with broken glass. A single narrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance. On this our guide knocked with a peculiar postman-like rat-tat.<br/>“Who is there?” cried a gruff voice from within.<br/>“It is I, McMurdo. You surely know my knock by this time.”<br/>There was a grumbling sound and a clanking and jarring of keys. The door swung heavily back, and a short, deep-chested man stood in the opening, with the yellow light of the lantern shining upon his protruded face and twinkling distrustful eyes.<br/>“That you, Mr. Thaddeus? But who are the others? I had no orders about them from the master.”<br/>“No, McMurdo? You surprise me! I told my brother last night that I should bring some friends.”<br/>“He ain’t been out o’ his room to-day, Mr. Thaddeus, and I have no orders. You know very well that I must stick to regulations. I can let you in, but your friends must just stop where they are.”<br/>This was an unexpected obstacle. Thaddeus Sholto looked about him in a perplexed and helpless manner. “This is too bad of you, McMurdo!” he said. “If I guarantee them, that is enough for you. There are young ladies, too. They cannot wait on the public road at this hour.”<br/>“Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus,” said the porter, inexorably. “Folk may be friends o’ yours, and yet no friends o’ the master’s. He pays me well to do my duty, and my duty I’ll do. I don’t know none o’ your friends.”<br/>“Oh, yes you do, McMurdo,” cried Sherlock Holmes, genially. “I don’t think you can have forgotten me. Don’t you remember the amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison’s rooms on the night of your benefit four years back?”<br/>“Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” roared the prize-fighter. “God’s truth! how could I have mistook you? If instead o’ standin’ there so quiet you had just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the jaw, I’d ha’ known you without a question. Ah, you’re one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy.”<br/>“You see, Watson, if all else fails me I have still one of the scientific professions open to me,” said Holmes, laughing. “Our friend won’t keep us out in the cold now, I am sure.”<br/>“In you come, sir, in you come, —you and your friends,” he answered. “Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus, but orders are very strict. Had to be certain of your friends before I let them in.”<br/>Inside, a gravel path wound through desolate grounds to a huge clump of a house, square and prosaic, all plunged in shadow save where a moonbeam struck one corner and glimmered in a garret window. The vast size of the building, with its gloom and its deathly silence, struck a chill to the heart. Even Thaddeus Sholto seemed ill at ease, and the lantern quivered and rattled in his hand.<br/>“I cannot understand it,” he said. “There must be some mistake. I distinctly told Bartholomew that we should be here, and yet there is no light in his window. I do not know what to make of it.”<br/>“Does he always guard the premises in this way?” asked Holmes.<br/>“Yes; he has followed my father’s custom. He was the favourite son, you know, and I sometimes think that my father may have told him more than he ever told me. That is Bartholomew’s window up there where the moonshine strikes. It is quite bright, but there is no light from within, I think.”<br/>“None,” said Holmes. “But I see the glint of a light in that little window beside the door.”<br/>“Ah, that is the housekeeper’s room. That is where old Mrs. Bernstone sits. She can tell us all about it. But perhaps you would not mind waiting here for a minute or two, for if we all go in together and she has no word of our coming she may be alarmed. But hush! what is that?”<br/>He held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my wrist, and we all stood with thumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great black house there sounded through the silent night the saddest and most pitiful of sounds, —the shrill, broken whimpering of a frightened woman.<br/>“It is Mrs. Bernstone,” said Sholto. “She is the only woman in the house. Wait here. I shall be back in a moment.” He hurried for the door, and knocked in his peculiar way. We could see a tall old woman admit him, and sway with pleasure at the very sight of him.<br/>“Oh, Mr. Thaddeus, sir, I am so glad you have come! I am so glad you have come, Mr. Thaddeus, sir!” We heard her reiterated rejoicings until the door was closed and her voice died away into a muffled monotone.<br/>Our guide had left us the lantern. Holmes swung it slowly round, and peered keenly at the house, and at the great rubbish-heaps which cumbered the grounds. Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. I did not notice at the time, but Miss Hope held Miss Morstan’s other hand. It was a wondrous subtle thing, for here Miss Morstan and I had never seen each other before that day, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marveled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So, we stood hand in hand, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.<br/>“What a strange place!” she said, looking round.<br/>“It looks as though all the moles in England had been let loose in it,” said Miss Hope. I agreed with her and said, “I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Ballarat, where the prospectors had been at work.”<br/>“And from the same cause,” said Holmes. “These are the traces of the treasure-seekers. You must remember that they were six years looking for it. No wonder that the grounds look like a gravel-pit.”<br/>At that moment the door of the house burst open, and Thaddeus Sholto came running out, with his hands thrown forward and terror in his eyes.<br/>“There is something amiss with Bartholomew!” he cried. “I am frightened! My nerves cannot stand it.” He was, indeed, half blubbering with fear, and his twitching feeble face peeping out from the great Astrakhan collar had the helpless appealing expression of a terrified child.<br/>“Come into the house,” said Holmes, in his crisp, firm way.<br/>“Yes, do!” pleaded Thaddeus Sholto. “I really do not feel equal to giving directions.”<br/>We all followed him into the housekeeper’s room, which stood upon the left-hand side of the passage. The old woman was pacing up and down with a scared look and restless picking fingers, but the sight of Miss Morstan appeared to have a soothing effect upon her.<br/>“God bless your sweet calm face!” she cried, with a hysterical sob. “It does me good to see you. Oh, but I have been sorely tried this day!”<br/>Miss Morstan patted her thin, work-worn hand, and murmured some few words of kindly womanly comfort which brought the colour back into the other’s bloodless cheeks.<br/>“Master has locked himself in and will not answer me,” she explained. “All day I have waited to hear from him, for he often likes to be alone; but an hour ago I feared that something was amiss, so I went up and peeped through the key-hole. You must go up, Mr. Thaddeus, —you must go up and look for yourself. I have seen Mr. Bartholomew Sholto in joy and in sorrow for ten long years, but I never saw him with such a face on him as that.”<br/>Sherlock Holmes took the lamp and led the way, for Thaddeus Sholto’s teeth were chattering in his head. So shaken was he that I had to pass my hand under his arm as we went up the stairs, for his knees were trembling under him. Twice as we ascended Holmes whipped his lens out of his pocket and carefully examined marks which appeared to me to be mere shapeless smudges of dust upon the cocoa-nut matting which served as a stair-carpet. He walked slowly from step to step, holding the lamp, and shooting keen glances to right and left. Miss Morstan had remained behind with the frightened housekeeper. At the same time Holmes and I noticed that Miss Hope wasn’t with them, but with us on the stair.<br/>“You can’t stop me from coming along,” she said before either of us could get a word out, “I promise I won’t be in the way.” Both Holmes and I expressed concern for her safety, but the matter was eventually settled by Mr. Sholto of all people when he declared that he wouldn’t mind more company. Holmes still seemed a bit perturbed, but continued to go up the stairs inspecting the carpet. I looked back at Miss Morstan who mouthed at me to go on, apparently not at all concerned that her friend was heading into the unknown.<br/>The third flight of stairs ended in a straight passage of some length, with a great picture in Indian tapestry upon the right of it and three doors upon the left. Holmes advanced along it in the same slow and methodical way, while we kept close at his heels, with our long black shadows streaming backwards down the corridor. The third door was that which we were seeking. Holmes knocked without receiving any answer, and then tried to turn the handle and force it open. It was locked on the inside, however, and by a broad and powerful bolt, as we could see when we set our lamp up against it. The key being turned; however, the hole was not entirely closed. Sherlock Holmes bent down to it, and instantly rose again with a sharp intaking of the breath.<br/>“There is something devilish in this, Watson,” said he, more moved than I had ever before seen him. “What do you make of it?”<br/>I stooped to the hole, and recoiled in horror. Moonlight was streaming into the room, and it was bright with a vague and shifty radiance. Looking straight at me, and suspended, as it were, in the air, for all beneath was in shadow, there hung a face, —the very face of our companion Thaddeus. There was the same high, shining head, the same circular bristle of red hair, the same bloodless countenance. The features were set, however, in a horrible smile, a fixed and unnatural grin, which in that still and moonlit room was more jarring to the nerves than any scowl or contortion. So, like was the face to that of our little friend that I looked round at him to make sure that he was indeed with us. Then I recalled to mind that he had mentioned to us that his brother and he were twins.<br/>“This is terrible!” I said to Holmes. “What is to be done?”<br/>“The door must come down,” he answered, and, springing against it, he put all his weight upon the lock. It creaked and groaned, but did not yield. Together we flung ourselves upon it once more, and this time it gave way with a sudden snap, and we found ourselves within Bartholomew Sholto’s chamber.<br/>It appeared to have been fitted up as a chemical laboratory. A double line of glass-stoppered bottles was drawn up upon the wall opposite the door, and the table was littered over with Bunsen burners, test-tubes, and retorts. In the corners stood carboys of acid in wicker baskets. One of these appeared to leak or to have been broken, for a stream of dark-coloured liquid had trickled out from it, and the air was heavy with a peculiarly pungent, tar-like odour. A set of steps stood at one side of the room, in the midst of a litter of lath and plaster, and above them there was an opening in the ceiling large enough for a man to pass through. At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope was thrown carelessly together.<br/>By the table, in a wooden arm-chair, the master of the house was seated all in a heap, with his head sunk upon his left shoulder, and that ghastly, inscrutable smile upon his face. He was stiff and cold, and had clearly been dead many hours. It seemed to me that not only his features but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion. By his hand upon the table there lay a peculiar instrument, —a brown, close-grained stick, with a stone head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Beside it was a torn sheet of note-paper with some words scrawled upon it. Holmes glanced at it, and then handed it to me.<br/>“You see,” he said, with a significant raising of the eyebrows.<br/>In the light of the lantern I read, with a thrill of horror, “The sign of the four.”<br/>“In God’s name, what does it all mean?” I asked.<br/>“It means murder,” said he, stooping over the dead man. “Ah, I expected it. Look here!” He pointed to what looked like a long, dark thorn stuck in the skin just above the ear.<br/>“It looks like a thorn,” said I.<br/>“It is a thorn. You may pick it out. But be careful, for it is poisoned.”<br/>I took it up between my finger and thumb. It came away from the skin so readily that hardly any mark was left behind. One tiny speck of blood showed where the puncture had been.<br/>“This is all an insoluble mystery to me,” said I. “It grows darker instead of clearer.”<br/>“On the contrary,” he answered, “it clears every instant. I only require a few missing links to have an entirely connected case.”<br/>We had almost forgotten our companions’ presence since we entered the chamber. Miss Hope was inspecting the chemistry equipment, apparently unbothered by the dead body in the room. I did hear later that she was quite disturbed, but was determined not to show it to Mr. Holmes and I, for fear she would be sent back downstairs. Mr. Sholto was still standing in the doorway, the very picture of terror, wringing his hands and moaning to himself. Suddenly, however, he broke out into a sharp, querulous cry.<br/>“The treasure is gone!” he said. “They have robbed him of the treasure! There is the hole through which we lowered it. I helped him to do it! I was the last person who saw him! I left him here last night, and I heard him lock the door as I came downstairs.”<br/>“What time was that?”<br/>“It was ten o’clock. And now he is dead, and the police will be called in, and I shall be suspected of having had a hand in it. Oh, yes, I am sure I shall. But you don’t think so, gentlemen? Surely you don’t think that it was I? Is it likely that I would have brought you here if it were I? Oh, dear! oh, dear! I know that I shall go mad!” He jerked his arms and stamped his feet in a kind of convulsive frenzy.<br/>“You have no reason for fear, Mr. Sholto,” said Holmes, kindly, putting his hand upon his shoulder. “Take my advice, and drive down to the station to report this matter to the police. Offer to assist them in every way. We shall wait here until your return.”<br/>The little man obeyed in a half-stupefied fashion, and we heard him stumbling down the stairs in the dark, for he raced away before Miss Hope could offer him the lantern, she had brought with her.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Sherlock Holmes (and Margaret Hope) Give a Demonstration</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Molly gets more action in this one!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, rubbing his hands, “we have half an hour to ourselves. Let us make good use of it. My case is, as I have told you, almost complete; but we must not err on the side of over-confidence. Simple as the case seems now, there may be something deeper underlying it.”<br/>“Simple!” I ejaculated.<br/>“Surely,” said he, with something of the air of a clinical professor expounding to his class. “Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters. You stay where you are as well Miss Hope. Now to work! In the first place, how did these folk come, and how did they go? The door has not been opened since last night. How of the window?” He carried the lamp across to it, muttering his observations aloud the while, but addressing them to himself rather than to me. “Window is snibbed on the inner side. Framework is solid. No hinges at the side. Let us open it. No water-pipe near. Roof quite out of reach. Yet a man has mounted by the window. It rained a little last night. Here is the print of a foot in mould upon the sill. And here is a circular muddy mark, and here again upon the floor, and here again by the table. See here, Watson! This is really a very pretty demonstration.”<br/>I looked at the round, well-defined muddy discs. “This is not a footmark,” said I.<br/>“It is something much more valuable to us. It is the impression of a wooden stump. You see here on the sill is the boot-mark, a heavy boot with the broad metal heel, and beside it is the mark of the timber-toe.”<br/>“It is the wooden-legged man.”<br/>“Quite so. But there has been someone else, —a very able and efficient ally. Could you scale that wall, doctor?”<br/>I looked out of the open window. The moon still shone brightly on that angle of the house. We were a good sixty feet from the ground, and, look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice in the brick-work.<br/>“It is absolutely impossible,” I answered.<br/>“Without aid it is so. But suppose you had a friend up here who lowered you this good stout rope which I see in the corner, securing one end of it to this great hook in the wall. Then, I think, if you were an active man, you might swarm up, wooden leg and all. You would depart, of course, in the same fashion, and your ally would draw up the rope, untie it from the hook, shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get away in the way that he originally came. As a minor point it may be noted,” he continued, fingering the rope, “that our wooden-legged friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor. His hands were far from horny. My lens discloses more than one blood-mark, especially towards the end of the rope, from which I gather that he slipped down with such velocity that he took the skin off his hand.”<br/>“This is all very well,” said I, “but the thing becomes more unintelligible than ever. How about this mysterious ally? How came he into the room?”<br/>“Yes, the ally!” repeated Holmes, pensively. “There are features of interest about this ally. He lifts the case from the regions of the commonplace. I fancy that this ally breaks fresh ground in the annals of crime in this country, —though parallel cases suggest themselves from India, and, if my memory serves me, from Senegambia.”<br/>“How came he, then?” I reiterated. “The door is locked; the window is inaccessible. Was it through the chimney?”<br/>“The grate is much too small,” he answered. “I had already considered that possibility.”<br/>“How then?” I persisted.<br/>“Through a hole in the roof?” Miss Hope suddenly spoke.<br/>Holmes looked at her as if seeing her for the very first time. He titled his head in curiousity and asked, “How have you come to that conclusion Miss Hope?”<br/>“Well, it’s as you say in Mr. Watson’s stories, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. The only other entrance is the hole in the ceiling. Also, hiding in the room above would have kept this mysterious person concealed from poor Mr. Sholto.”<br/>Holmes broke out into an enormous grin. “Why aren’t you a wonder Miss Hope. It is exactly as I have deduced. Now, Watson,” Holmes turned to me, “if you will have the kindness to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our researches to the room above, —the secret room in which the treasure was found.”<br/>He mounted the steps, and, seizing a rafter with either hand, he swung himself up into the garret. Then, lying on his face, he reached down for the lamp and held it while I followed him. I asked Miss Hope if she would be alright being alone for a few minutes. I had almost expected to have to argue with her about staying behind. I still felt uneasy about allowing her into this room, the room above would surely be too dangerous for her. However, Miss Hope seemed so pleased with the compliment Mr. Holmes gave her, she might even have agreed to go back downstairs if I had thought to ask her.<br/>The chamber in which we found ourselves was about ten feet one way and six the other. The floor was formed by the rafters, with thin lath-and-plaster between, so that in walking one had to step from beam to beam. The roof ran up to an apex, and was evidently the inner shell of the true roof of the house. There was no furniture of any sort, and the accumulated dust of years lay thick upon the floor.<br/>“Here you are, you see,” said Sherlock Holmes, putting his hand against the sloping wall. “This is a trap-door which leads out on to the roof. I can press it back, and here is the roof itself, sloping at a gentle angle. This, then, is the way by which Number One entered. Let us see if we can find any other traces of his individuality.”<br/>He held down the lamp to the floor, and as he did so I saw for the second time that night a startled, surprised look come over his face. For myself, as I followed his gaze my skin was cold under my clothes. The floor was covered thickly with the prints of a naked foot, —clear, well defined, perfectly formed, but scarce half the size of those of an ordinary man.<br/>“Holmes,” I said, in a whisper, not wanting Miss Hope to hear my dreadful thought, “a child has done the horrid thing.”<br/>Holmes had recovered his self-possession in an instant, though I noticed that he too spoke in a quitter voice than before. “I was staggered for the moment,” he said, “but the thing is quite natural. My memory failed me, or I should have been able to foretell it. There is nothing more to be learned here. Let us go down.”<br/>“What is your theory, then, as to those footmarks?” I asked, eagerly, when we had regained the lower room once more. Only to wince when Miss Hope asked, “What footprints?”<br/>Holmes, however, ignored her. “My dear Watson, try a little analysis yourself,” said he, with a touch of impatience. “You know my methods. Apply them, and it will be instructive to compare results.”<br/>“I cannot conceive anything which will cover the facts,” I answered.<br/>“It will be clear enough to you soon,” he said, in an off-hand way. “I think that there is nothing else of importance here, but I will look.” He whipped out his lens and a tape measure, and hurried about the room on his knees, measuring, comparing, examining, with his long thin nose only a few inches from the planks, and his beady eyes gleaming and deep-set like those of a bird. So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained blood-hound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law, instead of exerting them in its defence. As he hunted about, he kept muttering to himself, and finally he broke out into a loud crow of delight.<br/>“We are certainly in luck,” said he. “We ought to have very little trouble now. Number One has had the misfortune to tread in the creosote. You can see the outline of the edge of his small foot here at the side of this evil-smelling mess. The carboy has been cracked, you see, and the stuff has leaked out.”<br/>“What then?” I asked.<br/>“Why, we have got him, that’s all,” said he. “I know a dog that would follow that scent to the world’s end. If a pack can track a trailed herring across a shire, how far can a specially-trained hound follow so pungent a smell as this? It sounds like a sum in the rule of three. The answer should give us the—But halloa! here are the accredited representatives of the law.”<br/>Heavy steps and the clamour of loud voices were audible from below, and the hall door shut with a loud crash.<br/>“Before they come,” said Holmes, “just put your hand here on this poor fellow’s arm, and here on his leg. What do you feel?”<br/>“The muscles are as hard as a board,” I answered.<br/>“Quite so. They are in a state of extreme contraction, far exceeding the usual rigor mortis. Coupled with this distortion of the face, this Hippocratic smile, or ‘risus sardonicus,’ as the old writers called it, what conclusion would it suggest to your mind?”<br/>“Death from some powerful vegetable alkaloid,” I answered, — “some strychnine-like substance which would produce tetanus.”<br/>“That was the idea which occurred to me the instant I saw the drawn muscles of the face. On getting into the room I at once looked for the means by which the poison had entered the system. As you saw, I discovered a thorn which had been driven or shot with no great force into the scalp. You observe that the part struck was that which would be turned towards the hole in the ceiling if the man were erect in his chair. Now examine the thorn, you may examine it as well Miss Hope,” he turned, acknowledging her for the first time since coming down from the garret above. Miss Hope stepped forwardly eagerly.<br/>I took it up gingerly and held it in the light of the lantern, making sure that Miss Hope could see it too. It was long, sharp, and black, with a glazed look near the point as though some gummy substance had dried upon it. The blunt end had been trimmed and rounded off with a knife.<br/>“Is that an English thorn?” I asked.<br/>“No, it certainly is not.”<br/>“Indian?” asked Miss Hope.<br/>Holmes smiled at her again, but before he could compliment her deduction, the steps which had been coming nearer sounded loudly on the passage, and a very stout, portly man in a grey suit strode heavily into the room. He was red-faced, burly and plethoric, with a pair of very small twinkling eyes which looked keenly out from between swollen and puffy pouches. He was closely followed by an inspector in uniform, and by the still palpitating Thaddeus Sholto.<br/>“Here’s a business!” he cried, in a muffled, husky voice. “Here’s a pretty business! But who are all these? Why, the house seems to be as full as a rabbit-warren!”<br/>“I think you must recollect me, Mr. Athelney Jones,” said Holmes, quietly.<br/>“Why, of course I do!” he wheezed. “It’s Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the theorist. Remember you! I’ll never forget how you lectured us all on causes and inferences and effects in the Bishopgate jewel case. It’s true you set us on the right track; but you’ll own now that it was more by good luck than good guidance.”<br/>“It was a piece of very simple reasoning.”<br/>“Oh, come, now, come! Never be ashamed to own up. But what is all this?” Mr. Jones noticed Miss Hope for the first time and had the uniformed inspector take her downstairs despite her protests, “Really, Mr. Holmes! Allowing a lady to be involved in this business!”<br/>“I believe you have met my sister, Mr. Jones. Lady detectives are not unheard of.” Mr. Holmes argued, though without much fervor, likely he just found the entire situation, Miss Hope’s unexpected deductive skill and Mr. Jones’ shock, amusing.<br/>“You Holmeses are a different breed, than the rest of us,” Seemingly content with his scolding Mr. Jones took another look about the room, “Bad business! Bad business! Stern facts here, —no room for theories. How lucky that I happened to be out at Norwood over another case! I was at the station when the message arrived. What d’you think the man died of?”<br/>“Oh, this is hardly a case for me to theorise over,” said Holmes, dryly.<br/>“No, no. Still, we can’t deny that you hit the nail on the head sometimes. Dear me! Door locked; I understand. Jewels worth half a million missing. How was the window?”<br/>“Fastened; but there are steps on the sill.”<br/>“Well, well, if it was fastened the steps could have nothing to do with the matter. That’s common sense. Man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing. Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at times. —Just step outside, sergeant, and you, Mr. Sholto. Your friend can remain. —What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off with the treasure. How’s that?”<br/>“On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside.”<br/>“Hum! There’s a flaw there. Let us apply common sense to the matter. This Thaddeus Sholto was with his brother; there was a quarrel; so much we know. The brother is dead and the jewels are gone. So much also we know. No one saw the brother from the time Thaddeus left him. His bed had not been slept in. Thaddeus is evidently in a most disturbed state of mind. His appearance is—well, not attractive. You see that I am weaving my web round Thaddeus. The net begins to close upon him.”<br/>“You are not quite in possession of the facts yet,” said Holmes. “This splinter of wood, which I have every reason to believe to be poisoned, was in the man’s scalp where you still see the mark; this card, inscribed as you see it, was on the table; and beside it lay this rather curious stone-headed instrument. How does all that fit into your theory?”<br/>“Confirms it in every respect,” said the fat detective, pompously. “House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if this splinter be poisonous Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use of it as any other man. The card is some hocus-pocus, —a blind, as like as not. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is a hole in the roof.” With great activity, considering his bulk, he sprang up the steps and squeezed through into the garret, and immediately afterwards we heard his exulting voice proclaiming that he had found the trap-door.<br/>“He can find something,” remarked Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. “He has occasional glimmerings of reason. Il n’y a pas des sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l’esprit!”<br/>“You see!” said Athelney Jones, reappearing down the steps again. “Facts are better than mere theories, after all. My view of the case is confirmed. There is a trap-door communicating with the roof, and it is partly open.”<br/>“It was I who opened it.”<br/>“Oh, indeed! You did notice it, then?” He seemed a little crestfallen at the discovery. “Well, whoever noticed it, it shows how our gentleman got away. Inspector!”<br/>“Yes, sir,” the man had returned from his duty of escorting Miss Hope.<br/>“Ask Mr. Sholto to step this way. —Mr. Sholto, it is my duty to inform you that anything which you may say will be used against you. I arrest you in the Queen’s name as being concerned in the death of your brother.”<br/>“There, now! Didn’t I tell you!” cried the poor little man, throwing out his hands, and looking from one to the other of us.<br/>“Don’t trouble yourself about it, Mr. Sholto,” said Holmes. “I think that I can engage to clear you of the charge.”<br/>“Don’t promise too much, Mr. Theorist, —don’t promise too much!” snapped the detective. “You may find it a harder matter than you think.”<br/>“Not only will I clear him, Mr. Jones, but I will make you a free present of the name and description of one of the two people who were in this room last night. His name, I have every reason to believe, is Jonathan Small. He is a poorly-educated man, small, active, with his right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away upon the inner side. His left boot has a coarse, square-toed sole, with an iron band round the heel. He is a middle-aged man, much sunburned, and has been a convict. These few indications may be of some assistance to you, coupled with the fact that there is a good deal of skin missing from the palm of his hand. The other man—”<br/>“Ah! the other man—?” asked Athelney Jones, in a sneering voice, but impressed none the less, as I could easily see, by the precision of the other’s manner.<br/>“Is a rather curious person,” said Sherlock Holmes, turning upon his heel. “I hope before very long to be able to introduce you to the pair of them. —A word with you, Watson.”<br/>He led me out to the head of the stair. “This unexpected occurrence,” he said, “has caused us rather to lose sight of the original purpose of our journey.”<br/>“I have just been thinking so,” I answered. “It is not right that Miss Morstan and Miss Hope should remain in this stricken house.”<br/>“No. You must escort them home. I expect they have taken rooms in town not very far from Baker Street. I will wait for you here if you will drive out again. Or perhaps you are too tired?”<br/>“By no means. I don’t think I could rest until I know more of this fantastic business. I have seen something of the rough side of life, but I give you my word that this quick succession of strange surprises to-night has shaken my nerve completely. I should like, however, to see the matter through with you, now that I have got so far.”<br/>“Your presence will be of great service to me,” he answered. “We shall work the case out independently, and leave this fellow Jones to exult over any mare’s-nest which he may choose to construct. When you have dropped Miss Hope and Miss Morstan, I wish you to go on to No. 3, Pinchin Lane, down near the water’s edge at Lambeth. The third house on the right-hand side is a bird-stuffer’s: Sherman is the name. You will see a weasel holding a young rabbit in the window. Knock old Sherman up, and tell him, with my compliments, that I want Toby at once. You will bring Toby back in the cab with you.”<br/>“A dog, I suppose.”<br/>“Yes, —a queer mongrel, with a most amazing power of scent. I would rather have Toby’s help than that of the whole detective force of London.”<br/>“I shall bring him, then,” said I. “It is one now. I ought to be back before three, if I can get a fresh horse.”<br/>“And I,” said Holmes, “shall see what I can learn from Mrs. Bernstone, and from the Indian servant, who, Mr. Thaddeus tell me, sleeps in the next garret. Then I shall study the great Jones’s methods and listen to his not too delicate sarcasms.”</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. The Episode of the Barrel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Toby!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The police had brought a cab with them, and in this I escorted Miss Morstan and Miss Hope back their lodgings. After the angelic fashion of women, Miss Morstan had borne trouble with a calm face as long as there was someone weaker than herself to support, and I had found her bright and placid by the side of the frightened housekeeper. In the cab, however, she first turned faint, and then burst into a passion of weeping, —so sorely had she been tried by the adventures of the night. Miss Hope immediately comforted her friend. I, however, sat rigid and barely said a word the whole ride. I’ve been told since that I was thought to be cold and distant upon that journey. How little guessed was the struggle within my breast, or the effort of self-restraint which held me back. My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as my hand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalities of life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as had this one day of strange experiences. Yet there were two thoughts which sealed the words of affection upon my lips. She was weak and helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time. Worse still, she was rich. If Holmes’s researches were successful, she would be an heiress. Was it fair, was it honourable, that a half-pay surgeon should take such advantage of an intimacy which chance had brought about? Might she not look upon me as a mere vulgar fortune-seeker? I could not bear to risk that such a thought should cross her mind. This Agra treasure intervened like an impassable barrier between us.<br/>
It was nearly two o’clock when we reached the lodgings. My thoughts and the importance of my errand kept me in the cab, but I promised faithfully to call and report any progress which we might make with the case. As the cab drove away, I stole a glance back, and I still seem to see the two graceful, clinging figures, the half-opened door, the hall-light shining through stained glass, the barometer, and the bright stair-rods. It was soothing to catch even that passing glimpse.<br/>
The more I thought of what had happened, the wilder and darker it grew. I reviewed the whole extraordinary sequence of events as I rattled on through the silent gas-lit streets. There was the original problem: that at least was pretty clear now. The death of Captain Morstan, the sending of the pearls, the advertisement, the letter, —we had had light upon all those events. They had only led us, however, to a deeper and far more tragic mystery. The Indian treasure, the curious plan found among Morstan’s baggage, the strange scene at Major Sholto’s death, the rediscovery of the treasure immediately followed by the murder of the discoverer, the very singular accompaniments to the crime, the footsteps, the remarkable weapons, the words upon the card, corresponding with those upon Captain Morstan’s chart,—here was indeed a labyrinth in which a man less singularly endowed than my fellow-lodger might well despair of ever finding the clue.<br/>
Pinchin Lane was a row of shabby two-storied brick houses in the lower quarter of Lambeth. I had to knock for some time at No. 3 before I could make my impression. At last, however, there was the glint of a candle behind the blind, and a face looked out at the upper window.<br/>
“Go on, you drunken vagabone,” said the face. “If you kick up any more row, I’ll open the kennels and let out forty-three dogs upon you.”<br/>
“If you’ll let one out it’s just what I have come for,” said I.<br/>
“Go on!” yelled the voice. “So, help me gracious, I have a wiper in the bag, an’ I’ll drop it on your ’ead if you don’t hook it.”<br/>
“But I want a dog,” I cried.<br/>
“I won’t be argued with!” shouted Mr. Sherman. “Now stand clear, for when I say ‘three,’ down goes the wiper.”<br/>
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes—” I began, but the words had a most magical effect, for the window instantly slammed down, and within a minute the door was unbarred and open. Mr. Sherman was a lanky, lean old man, with stooping shoulders, a stringy neck, and blue-tinted glasses.<br/>
“A friend of Mr. Sherlock is always welcome,” said he. “Step in, sir. Keep clear of the badger; for he bites. Ah, naughty, naughty, would you take a nip at the gentleman?” This to a stoat which thrust its wicked head and red eyes between the bars of its cage. “Don’t mind that, sir: it’s only a slow-worm. It hain’t got no fangs, so I gives it the run o’ the room, for it keeps the beetles down. You must not mind my bein’ just a little short wi’ you at first, for I’m guyed at by the children, and there’s many a one just comes down this lane to knock me up. What was it that Mr. Sherlock Holmes wanted, sir?”<br/>
“He wanted a dog of yours.”<br/>
“Ah! that would be Toby.”<br/>
“Yes, Toby was the name.”<br/>
“Toby lives at No. 7 on the left here.” He moved slowly forward with his candle among the queer animal family which he had gathered round him. In the uncertain, shadowy light I could see dimly that there were glancing, glimmering eyes peeping down at us from every cranny and corner. Even the rafters above our heads were lined by solemn fowls, who lazily shifted their weight from one leg to the other as our voices disturbed their slumbers.<br/>
Toby proved to be an ugly, long-haired, lop-eared creature, half spaniel and half lurcher, brown-and-white in colour, with a very clumsy waddling gait. It accepted after some hesitation a lump of sugar which the old naturalist handed to me, and, having thus sealed an alliance, it followed me to the cab, and made no difficulties about accompanying me. It had just struck three on the Palace clock when I found myself back once more at Pondicherry Lodge. The ex-prize-fighter McMurdo had, I found, been arrested as an accessory, and both he and Mr. Sholto had been marched off to the station. Two constables guarded the narrow gate, but they allowed me to pass with the dog on my mentioning the detective’s name.<br/>
Holmes was standing on the door-step, with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe.<br/>
“Ah, you have him there!” said he. “Good dog, then! Atheney Jones has gone. We have had an immense display of energy since you left. He has arrested not only friend Thaddeus, but the gatekeeper, the housekeeper, and the Indian servant. We have the place to ourselves, but for a sergeant upstairs. Leave the dog here, and come up.”<br/>
We tied Toby to the hall table, and re-ascended the stairs. The room was as he had left it, save that a sheet had been draped over the central figure. A weary-looking police-sergeant reclined in the corner.<br/>
“Lend me your bull’s-eye, sergeant,” said my companion. “Now tie this bit of card round my neck, so as to hang it in front of me. Thank you. Now I must kick off my boots and stockings. —Just you carry them down with you, Watson. I am going to do a little climbing. And dip my handkerchief into the creosote. That will do. Now come up into the garret with me for a moment.”<br/>
We clambered up through the hole. Holmes turned his light once more upon the footsteps in the dust.<br/>
“I wish you particularly to notice these footmarks,” he said. “Do you observe anything noteworthy about them?”<br/>
“They belong,” I said, “to a child or a small woman.”<br/>
“Apart from their size, though. Is there nothing else?”<br/>
“They appear to be much as other footmarks.”<br/>
“Not at all. Look here! This is the print of a right foot in the dust. Now I make one with my naked foot beside it. What is the chief difference?”<br/>
“Your toes are all cramped together. The other print has each toe distinctly divided.”<br/>
“Quite so. That is the point. Bear that in mind. Now, would you kindly step over to that flap-window and smell the edge of the wood-work? I shall stay here, as I have this handkerchief in my hand.”<br/>
I did as he directed, and was instantly conscious of a strong tarry smell.<br/>
“That is where he put his foot in getting out. If you can trace him, I should think that Toby will have no difficulty. Now run downstairs, loose the dog, and look out for Blondin.”<br/>
By the time that I got out into the grounds Sherlock Holmes was on the roof, and I could see him like an enormous glow-worm crawling very slowly along the ridge. I lost sight of him behind a stack of chimneys, but he presently reappeared, and then vanished once more upon the opposite side. When I made my way round there, I found him seated at one of the corner eaves.<br/>
“That you, Watson?” he cried.<br/>
“Yes.”<br/>
“This is the place. What is that black thing down there?”<br/>
“A water-barrel.”<br/>
“Top on it?”<br/>
“Yes.”<br/>
“No sign of a ladder?”<br/>
“No.”<br/>
“Confound the fellow! It’s a most break-neck place. I ought to be able to come down where he could climb up. The water-pipe feels pretty firm. Here goes, anyhow.”<br/>
There was a scuffling of feet, and the lantern began to come steadily down the side of the wall. Then with a light spring he came on to the barrel, and from there to the earth.<br/>
“It was easy to follow him,” he said, drawing on his stockings and boots. “Tiles were loosened the whole way along, and in his hurry, he had dropped this. It confirms my diagnosis, as you doctors express it.”<br/>
The object which he held up to me was a small pocket or pouch woven out of coloured grasses and with a few tawdry beads strung round it. In shape and size, it was not unlike a cigarette-case. Inside were half a dozen spines of dark wood, sharp at one end and rounded at the other, like that which had struck Bartholomew Sholto.<br/>
“They are hellish things,” said he. “Look out that you don’t prick yourself. I’m delighted to have them, for the chances are that they are all he has. There is the less fear of you or me finding one in our skin before long. I would sooner face a Martini bullet, myself. Are you game for a six-mile trudge, Watson?”<br/>
“Certainly,” I answered.<br/>
“Your leg will stand it?”<br/>
“Oh, yes.”<br/>
“Here you are, doggy! Good old Toby! Smell it, Toby, smell it!” He pushed the creosote handkerchief under the dog’s nose, while the creature stood with its fluffy legs separated, and with a most comical cock to its head, like a connoisseur sniffing the bouquet of a famous vintage. Holmes then threw the handkerchief to a distance, fastened a stout cord to the mongrel’s collar, and led him to the foot of the water-barrel. The creature instantly broke into a succession of high, tremulous yelps, and, with his nose on the ground, and his tail in the air, pattered off upon the trail at a pace which strained his leash and kept us at the top of our speed.<br/>
Upon my return to Pondicherry Lodge a curious thought had occurred to me, and following Toby I set about solving an entirely different mystery.<br/>
“Miss Hope seems to have had an education similar to your sister’s.”<br/>
“My sister’s intellect was deliberately cultivated; I expect Miss Hope’s was merely indulged. Although, if her friendship with Miss Morstan is any indication as to her mind, I expect Lord Hope’s legitimate children are receiving a top-rate education.”<br/>
Seeing my surprise at his statement, he explained to me the story that was an old favorite of the upper crust of London when there was nothing else to gossip about. There are only two things I have to say about it here. Having since met the Baron’s whole family, I have nothing but compliments for all their characters. Second, the story distracted me from asking any more questions to my friend about what he thought of Miss Hope.<br/>
The east had been gradually whitening, and we could now see some distance in the cold grey light. The square, massive house, with its black, empty windows and high, bare walls, towered up, sad and forlorn, behind us. Our course led right across the grounds, in and out among the trenches and pits with which they were scarred and intersected. The whole place, with its scattered dirt-heaps and ill-grown shrubs, had a blighted, ill-omened look which harmonized with the black tragedy which hung over it.<br/>
On reaching the boundary wall Toby ran along, whining eagerly, underneath its shadow, and stopped finally in a corner screened by a young beech. Where the two walls joined, several bricks had been loosened, and the crevices left were worn down and rounded upon the lower side, as though they had frequently been used as a ladder. Holmes clambered up, and, taking the dog from me, he dropped it over upon the other side.<br/>
“There’s the print of wooden-leg’s hand,” he remarked, as I mounted up beside him. “You see the slight smudge of blood upon the white plaster. What a lucky thing it is that we have had no very heavy rain since yesterday! The scent will lie upon the road in spite of their eight-and-twenty hours’ start.”<br/>
I confess that I had my doubts myself when I reflected upon the great traffic which had passed along the London road in the interval. My fears were soon appeased, however. Toby never hesitated or swerved, but waddled on in his peculiar rolling fashion. Clearly, the pungent smell of the creosote rose high above all other contending scents.<br/>
“Do not imagine,” said Holmes, “that I depend for my success in this case upon the mere chance of one of these fellows having put his foot in the chemical. I have knowledge now which would enable me to trace them in many different ways. This, however, is the readiest and, since fortune has put it into our hands, I should be culpable if I neglected it. It has, however, prevented the case from becoming the pretty little intellectual problem which it at one time promised to be. There might have been some credit to be gained out of it, but for this too palpable clue.”<br/>
“There is credit, and to spare,” said I. “I assure you, Holmes, that I marvel at the means by which you obtain your results in this case, even more than I did in the Jefferson Forrester Murder. The thing seems to me to be deeper and more inexplicable. How, for example, could you describe with such confidence the wooden-legged man?”<br/>
“Pshaw, my dear boy! it was simplicity itself. I don’t wish to be theatrical. It is all patent and above-board. Two officers who are in command of a convict-guard learn an important secret as to buried treasure. A map is drawn for them by an Englishman named Jonathan Small. You remember that we saw the name upon the chart in Captain Morstan’s possession. He had signed it in behalf of himself and his associates, —the sign of the four, as he somewhat dramatically called it. Aided by this chart, the officers—or one of them—gets the treasure and brings it to England, leaving, we will suppose, some condition under which he received it unfulfilled. Now, then, why did not Jonathan Small get the treasure himself? The answer is obvious. The chart is dated at a time when Morstan was brought into close association with convicts. Jonathan Small did not get the treasure because he and his associates were themselves convicts and could not get away.”<br/>
“But that is mere speculation,” said I.<br/>
“It is more than that. It is the only hypothesis which covers the facts. Let us see how it fits in with the sequel. Major Sholto remains at peace for some years, happy in the possession of his treasure. Then he receives a letter from India which gives him a great fright. What was that?”<br/>
“A letter to say that the men whom he had wronged had been set free.”<br/>
“Or had escaped. That is much more likely, for he would have known what their term of imprisonment was. It would not have been a surprise to him. What does he do then? He guards himself against a wooden-legged man, —a white man, mark you, for he mistakes a white tradesman for him, and actually fires a pistol at him. Now, only one white man’s name is on the chart. The others are Hindoos or Mohammedans. There is no other white man. Therefore, we may say with confidence that the wooden-legged man is identical with Jonathan Small. Does the reasoning strike you as being faulty?”<br/>
“No: it is clear and concise.”<br/>
“Well, now, let us put ourselves in the place of Jonathan Small. Let us look at it from his point of view. He comes to England with the double idea of regaining what he would consider to be his rights and of having his revenge upon the man who had wronged him. He found out where Sholto lived, and very possibly he established communications with someone inside the house. There is this butler, Lal Rao, whom we have not seen. Mrs. Bernstone gives him far from a good character. Small could not find out, however, where the treasure was hid, for no one ever knew, save the major and one faithful servant who had died. Suddenly Small learns that the major is on his death-bed. In a frenzy lest the secret of the treasure die with him, he runs the gauntlet of the guards, makes his way to the dying man’s window, and is only deterred from entering by the presence of his two sons. Mad with hate, however, against the dead man, he enters the room that night, searches his private papers in the hope of discovering some memorandum relating to the treasure, and finally leaves a momento of his visit in the short inscription upon the card. He had doubtless planned beforehand that should he slay the major he would leave some such record upon the body as a sign that it was not a common murder, but, from the point of view of the four associates, something in the nature of an act of justice. Whimsical and bizarre conceits of this kind are common enough in the annals of crime, and usually afford valuable indications as to the criminal. Do you follow all this?”<br/>
“Very clearly.”<br/>
“Now, what could Jonathan Small do? He could only continue to keep a secret watch upon the efforts made to find the treasure. Possibly he leaves England and only comes back at intervals. Then comes the discovery of the garret, and he is instantly informed of it. We again trace the presence of some confederate in the household. Jonathan, with his wooden leg, is utterly unable to reach the lofty room of Bartholomew Sholto. He takes with him, however, a rather curious associate, who gets over this difficulty, but dips his naked foot into creosote, whence comes Toby, and a six-mile limp for a half-pay officer with a damaged tendo Achillis.”<br/>
“But it was the associate, and not Jonathan, who committed the crime.”<br/>
“Quite so. And rather to Jonathan’s disgust, to judge by the way he stamped about when he got into the room. He bore no grudge against Bartholomew Sholto, and would have preferred if he could have been simply bound and gagged. He did not wish to put his head in a halter. There was no help for it, however: the savage instincts of his companion had broken out, and the poison had done its work: so, Jonathan Small left his record, lowered the treasure-box to the ground, and followed it himself. That was the train of events as far as I can decipher them. Of course, as to his personal appearance he must be middle-aged, and must be sunburned after serving his time in such an oven as the Andamans. His height is readily calculated from the length of his stride, and we know that he was bearded. His hairiness was the one point which impressed itself upon Thaddeus Sholto when he saw him at the window. I don’t know that there is anything else.”<br/>
“The associate?”<br/>
“Ah, well, there is no great mystery in that. But you will know all about it soon enough. How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of nature! You have not a pistol, have you?”<br/>
“I have my stick.”<br/>
“It is just possible that we may need something of the sort if we get to their lair. Jonathan I shall leave to you, but if the other turns nasty I shall shoot him dead.” He took out his revolver as he spoke, and, having loaded two of the chambers, he put it back into the right-hand pocket of his jacket.<br/>
We had during this time been following the guidance of Toby down the half-rural villa-lined roads which lead to the metropolis. Now, however, we were beginning to come among continuous streets, where labourers and dockmen were already astir, and slatternly women were taking down shutters and brushing door-steps. At the square-topped corner public houses business was just beginning, and rough-looking men were emerging, rubbing their sleeves across their beards after their morning wet. Strange dogs sauntered up and stared wonderingly at us as we passed, but our inimitable Toby looked neither to the right nor to the left, but trotted onwards with his nose to the ground and an occasional eager whine which spoke of a hot scent.<br/>
We had traversed Streatham, Brixton, Camberwell, and now found ourselves in Kennington Lane, having borne away through the side-streets to the east of the Oval. The men whom we pursued seemed to have taken a curiously zigzag road, with the idea probably of escaping observation. They had never kept to the main road if a parallel side-street would serve their turn. At the foot of Kennington Lane they had edged away to the left through Bond Street and Miles Street. Where the latter street turns into Knight’s Place, Toby ceased to advance, but began to run backwards and forwards with one ear cocked and the other drooping, the very picture of canine indecision. Then he waddled round in circles, looking up to us from time to time, as if to ask for sympathy in his embarrassment.<br/>
“What the deuce is the matter with the dog?” growled Holmes. “They surely would not take a cab, or go off in a balloon.”<br/>
“Perhaps they stood here for some time,” I suggested.<br/>
“Ah! it’s all right. He’s off again,” said my companion, in a tone of relief.<br/>
He was indeed off, for after sniffing round again he suddenly made up his mind, and darted away with an energy and determination such as he had not yet shown. The scent appeared to be much hotter than before, for he had not even to put his nose on the ground, but tugged at his leash and tried to break into a run. I could see by the gleam in Holmes’s eyes that he thought we were nearing the end of our journey.<br/>
Our course now ran down Nine Elms until we came to Broderick and Nelson’s large timber-yard, just past the White Eagle tavern. Here the dog, frantic with excitement, turned down through the side-gate into the enclosure, where the sawyers were already at work. On the dog raced through sawdust and shavings, down an alley, round a passage, between two wood-piles, and finally, with a triumphant yelp, sprang upon a large barrel which still stood upon the hand-trolley on which it had been brought. With lolling tongue and blinking eyes, Toby stood upon the cask, looking from one to the other of us for some sign of appreciation. The staves of the barrel and the wheels of the trolley were smeared with a dark liquid, and the whole air was heavy with the smell of creosote.<br/>
Sherlock Holmes and I looked blankly at each other, and then burst simultaneously into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Molly's father basically let her run wild. I don't think ACD would have written the deliberately transgressive Molly of The Abominable Bride, but he might have written a woman whose only expectation in life was to become a crazy scientist cat lady who cares for her father in his old age.<br/>Also, for the purposes of this story, all of the Enola Holmes books have taken place before this and she is off solving her own mysteries with her brothers' blessings.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. The Baker Street Irregulars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What now?” I asked. “Toby has lost his character for infallibility.”<br/>“He acted according to his lights,” said Holmes, lifting him down from the barrel and walking him out of the timber-yard. “If you consider how much creosote is carted about London in one day, it is no great wonder that our trail should have been crossed. It is much used now, especially for the seasoning of wood. Poor Toby is not to blame.”<br/>“We must get on the main scent again, I suppose.”<br/>“Yes. And, fortunately, we have no distance to go. Evidently what puzzled the dog at the corner of Knight’s Place was that there were two different trails running in opposite directions. We took the wrong one. It only remains to follow the other.”<br/>There was no difficulty about this. On leading Toby to the place where he had committed his fault, he cast about in a wide circle and finally dashed off in a fresh direction.<br/>“We must take care that he does not now bring us to the place where the creosote-barrel came from,” I observed.<br/>“I had thought of that. But you notice that he keeps on the pavement, whereas the barrel passed down the roadway. No, we are on the true scent now.”<br/>It tended down towards the river-side, running through Belmont Place and Prince’s Street. At the end of Broad Street, it ran right down to the water’s edge, where there was a small wooden wharf. Toby led us to the very edge of this, and there stood whining, looking out on the dark current beyond.<br/>“We are out of luck,” said Holmes. “They have taken to a boat here.” Several small punts and skiffs were lying about in the water and on the edge of the wharf. We took Toby round to each in turn, but, though he sniffed earnestly, he made no sign.<br/>Close to the rude landing-stage was a small brick house, with a wooden placard slung out through the second window. “Mordecai Smith” was printed across it in large letters, and, underneath, “Boats to hire by the hour or day.” A second inscription above the door informed us that a steam launch was kept, —a statement which was confirmed by a great pile of coke upon the jetty. Sherlock Holmes looked slowly round, and his face assumed an ominous expression.<br/>“This looks bad,” said he. “These fellows are sharper than I expected. They seem to have covered their tracks. There has, I fear, been preconcerted management here.”<br/>He was approaching the door of the house, when it opened, and a little, curly-headed lad of six came running out, followed by a stoutish, red-faced woman with a large sponge in her hand.<br/>“You come back and be washed, Jack,” she shouted. “Come back, you young imp; for if your father comes home and finds you like that, he’ll let us hear of it.”<br/>“Dear little chap!” said Holmes, strategically. “What a rosy-cheeked young rascal! Now, Jack, is there anything you would like?”<br/>The youth pondered for a moment. “I’d like a shillin’,” said he.<br/>“Nothing you would like better?”<br/>“I’d like two shillin’ better,” the prodigy answered, after some thought.<br/>“Here you are, then! Catch! —A fine child, Mrs. Smith!”<br/>“Lor’ bless you, sir, he is that, and forward. He gets a’most too much for me to manage, ’specially when my man is away days at a time.”<br/>“Away, is he?” said Holmes, in a disappointed voice. “I am sorry for that, for I wanted to speak to Mr. Smith.”<br/>“He’s been away since yesterday mornin’, sir, and, truth to tell, I am beginnin’ to feel frightened about him. But if it was about a boat, sir, maybe I could serve as well.”<br/>“I wanted to hire his steam launch.”<br/>“Why, bless you, sir, it is in the steam launch that he has gone. That’s what puzzles me; for I know there ain’t more coals in her than would take her to about Woolwich and back. If he’d been away in the barge, I’d ha’ thought nothin’; for many a time a job has taken him as far as Gravesend, and then if there was much doin’ there, he might ha’ stayed over. But what good is a steam launch without coals?”<br/>“He might have bought some at a wharf down the river.”<br/>“He might, sir, but it weren’t his way. Many a time I’ve heard him call out at the prices they charge for a few odd bags. Besides, I don’t like that wooden-legged man, wi’ his ugly face and outlandish talk. What did he want always knockin’ about here for?”<br/>“A wooden-legged man?” said Holmes, with bland surprise.<br/>“Yes, sir, a brown, monkey-faced chap that’s called more’n once for my old man. It was him that roused him up yesternight, and, what’s more, my man knew he was comin’, for he had steam up in the launch. I tell you straight, sir, I don’t feel easy in my mind about it.”<br/>“But, my dear Mrs. Smith,” said Holmes, shrugging his shoulders, “You are frightening yourself about nothing. How could you possibly tell that it was the wooden-legged man who came in the night? I don’t quite understand how you can be so sure.”<br/>“His voice, sir. I knew his voice, which is kind o’ thick and foggy. He tapped at the winder, —about three it would be. ‘Show a leg, matey,’ says he: ‘time to turn out guard.’ My old man woke up Jim, —that’s my eldest, —and away they went, without so much as a word to me. I could hear the wooden leg clackin’ on the stones.”<br/>“And was this wooden-legged man alone?”<br/>“Couldn’t say, I am sure, sir. I didn’t hear no one else.”<br/>“I am sorry, Mrs. Smith, for I wanted a steam launch, and I have heard good reports of the—Let me see, what is her name?”<br/>“The Aurora, sir.”<br/>“Ah! She’s not that old green launch with a yellow line, very broad in the beam?”<br/>“No, indeed. She’s as trim a little thing as any on the river. She’s been fresh painted, black with two red streaks.”<br/>“Thanks. I hope that you will hear soon from Mr. Smith. I am going down the river; and if I should see anything of the Aurora I shall let him know that you are uneasy. A black funnel, you say?”<br/>“No, sir. Black with a white band.”<br/>“Ah, of course. It was the sides which were black. Good-morning, Mrs. Smith. —There is a boatman here with a wherry, Watson. We shall take it and cross the river.<br/>“The main thing with people of that sort,” said Holmes, as we sat in the sheets of the wherry, “is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do, they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.”<br/>“Our course now seems pretty clear,” said I.<br/>“What would you do, then?”<br/>“I would engage a launch and go down the river on the track of the Aurora.”<br/>“My dear fellow, it would be a colossal task. She may have touched at any wharf on either side of the stream between here and Greenwich. Below the bridge there is a perfect labyrinth of landing-places for miles. It would take you days and days to exhaust them, if you set about it alone.”<br/>“Employ the police, then.”<br/>“No. I shall probably call Athelney Jones in at the last moment. He is not a bad fellow, and I should not like to do anything which would injure him professionally. But I have a fancy for working it out myself, now that we have gone so far.”<br/>“Could we advertise, then, asking for information from wharfingers?”<br/>“Worse and worse! Our men would know that the chase was hot at their heels, and they would be off out of the country. As it is, they are likely enough to leave, but as long as they think they are perfectly safe they will be in no hurry. Jones’s energy will be of use to us there, for his view of the case is sure to push itself into the daily press, and the runaways will think that everyone is off on the wrong scent.”<br/>“What are we to do, then?” I asked, as we landed near Millbank Penitentiary.<br/>“Take this hansom, drive home, have some breakfast, and get an hour’s sleep. It is quite on the cards that we may be afoot to-night again. Stop at a telegraph-office, cabby! We will keep Toby, for he may be of use to us yet.”<br/>We pulled up at the Great Peter Street post-office, and Holmes dispatched his wire. “Whom do you think that is to?” he asked, as we resumed our journey.<br/>“I am sure I don’t know.”<br/>“You remember the Baker Street division of the detective police force whom I employed in the Jefferson Hope case?”<br/>“Well,” said I, laughing.<br/>“This is just the case where they might be invaluable. If they fail, I have other resources; but I shall try them first. That wire was to my dirty little lieutenant, Wiggins, and I expect that he and his gang will be with us before we have finished our breakfast.”<br/>It was between eight and nine o’clock now, and I was conscious of a strong reaction after the successive excitements of the night. I was limp and weary, befogged in mind and fatigued in body. I had not the professional enthusiasm which carried my companion on, nor could I look at the matter as a mere abstract intellectual problem. As far as the death of Bartholomew Sholto went, I had heard little good of him, and could feel no intense antipathy to his murderers. The treasure, however, was a different matter. That, or part of it, belonged rightfully to Miss Morstan. While there was a chance of recovering it, I was ready to devote my life to the one object. True, if I found it, it would probably put her forever beyond my reach. Yet it would be a petty and selfish love which would be influenced by such a thought as that. If Holmes could work to find the criminals, I had a tenfold stronger reason to urge me on to find the treasure.<br/>A bath at Baker Street and a complete change freshened me up wonderfully. When I came down to our room, I found the breakfast laid and Homes pouring out the coffee.<br/>“Here it is,” said he, laughing, and pointing to an open newspaper. “The energetic Jones and the ubiquitous reporter have fixed it up between them. But you have had enough of the case. Better have your ham and eggs first.”<br/>I took the paper from him and read the short notice, which was headed “Mysterious Business at Upper Norwood.”<br/>“About twelve o’clock last night,” said the Standard, “Mr. Bartholomew Sholto, of Pondicherry Lodge, Upper Norwood, was found dead in his room under circumstances which point to foul play. As far as we can learn, no actual traces of violence were found upon Mr. Sholto’s person, but a valuable collection of Indian gems which the deceased gentleman had inherited from his father has been carried off. The discovery was first made by Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who had called at the house with Mr. Thaddeus Sholto, brother of the deceased. By a singular piece of good fortune, Mr. Athelney Jones, the well-known member of the detective police force, happened to be at the Norwood Police Station, and was on the ground within half an hour of the first alarm. His trained and experienced faculties were at once directed towards the detection of the criminals, with the gratifying result that the brother, Thaddeus Sholto, has already been arrested, together with the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernstone, an Indian butler named Lal Rao, and a porter, or gatekeeper, named McMurdo. It is quite certain that the thief or thieves were well acquainted with the house, for Mr. Jones’s well-known technical knowledge and his powers of minute observation have enabled him to prove conclusively that the miscreants could not have entered by the door or by the window, but must have made their way across the roof of the building, and so through a trap-door into a room which communicated with that in which the body was found. This fact, which has been very clearly made out, proves conclusively that it was no mere haphazard burglary. The prompt and energetic action of the officers of the law shows the great advantage of the presence on such occasions of a single vigorous and masterful mind. We cannot but think that it supplies an argument to those who would wish to see our detectives more decentralised, and so brought into closer and more effective touch with the cases which it is their duty to investigate.”<br/>“Isn’t it gorgeous!” said Holmes, grinning over his coffee-cup. “What do you think of it?”<br/>“I think that we have had a close shave ourselves of being arrested for the crime.”<br/>“So, do I. I wouldn’t answer for our safety now, if he should happen to have another of his attacks of energy.”<br/>At this moment there was a loud ring at the bell, and I could hear Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, raising her voice in a wail of expostulation and dismay.<br/>“By heaven, Holmes,” I said, half rising, “I believe that they are really after us.”<br/>“No, it’s not quite so bad as that. It is the unofficial force, —the Baker Street irregulars.”<br/>As he spoke, there came a swift pattering of naked feet upon the stairs, a clatter of high voices, and in rushed a dozen dirty and ragged little street-Arabs. There was some show of discipline among them, despite their tumultuous entry, for they instantly drew up in line and stood facing us with expectant faces. One of their number, taller and older than the others, stood forward with an air of lounging superiority which was very funny in such a disreputable little scarecrow.<br/>“Got your message, sir,” said he, “and brought ’em on sharp. Three bob and a tanner for tickets.”<br/>“Here you are,” said Holmes, producing some silver. “In future they can report to you, Wiggins, and you to me. I cannot have the house invaded in this way. However, it is just as well that you should all hear the instructions. I want to find the whereabouts of a steam launch called the Aurora, owner Mordecai Smith, black with two red streaks, funnel black with a white band. She is down the river somewhere. I want one boy to be at Mordecai Smith’s landing-stage opposite Millbank to say if the boat comes back. You must divide it out among yourselves, and do both banks thoroughly. Let me know the moment you have news. Is that all clear?”<br/>“Yes, guv’nor,” said Wiggins.<br/>“The old scale of pay, and a guinea to the boy who finds the boat. Here’s a day in advance. Now off you go!” He handed them a shilling each, and away they buzzed down the stairs, and I saw them a moment later streaming down the street.<br/>“If the launch is above water, they will find her,” said Holmes, as he rose from the table and lit his pipe. “They can go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone. I expect to hear before evening that they have spotted her. In the meanwhile, we can do nothing but await results. We cannot pick up the broken trail until we find either the Aurora or Mr. Mordecai Smith.”<br/>“Toby could eat these scraps, I dare say. Are you going to bed, Holmes?”<br/>“No; I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely. I am going to smoke and to think over this queer business to which my fair client has introduced us. If ever man had an easy task, this of ours ought to be. Wooden-legged men are not so common, but the other man must, I should think, be absolutely unique.”<br/>“That other man again!”<br/>“I have no wish to make a mystery of him, —to you, anyway. But you must have formed your own opinion. Now, do consider the data. Diminutive footmarks, toes never fettered by boots, naked feet, stone-headed wooden mace, great agility, small poisoned darts. What do you make of all this?”<br/>“A savage!” I exclaimed. “Perhaps one of those Indians who were the associates of Jonathan Small.”<br/>“Hardly that,” said he. “When first I saw signs of strange weapons I was inclined to think so; but the remarkable character of the footmarks caused me to reconsider my views. Some of the inhabitants of the Indian Peninsula are small men, but none could have left such marks as that. The Hindoo proper has long and thin feet. The sandal-wearing Mohammedan has the great toe well separated from the others, because the thong is commonly passed between. These little darts, too, could only be shot in one way. They are from a blow-pipe. Now, then, where are we to find our savage?”<br/>“South American,” I hazarded.<br/>“Don’t blindly guess. Miss Hope already came to the answer,” at my confused face he stretched his hand up, and took down a bulky volume from the shelf. “This is the first volume of a gazetteer which is now being published. It may be looked upon as the very latest authority. What have we here? ‘Andaman Islands, situated 340 miles to the north of Sumatra, in the Bay of Bengal.’ Hum! hum! What’s all this? Moist climate, coral reefs, sharks, Port Blair, convict-barracks, Rutland Island, cottonwoods—Ah, here we are. ‘The aborigines of the Andaman Islands may perhaps claim the distinction of being the smallest race upon this earth, though some anthropologists prefer the Bushmen of Africa, the Digger Indians of America, and the Terra del Fuegians. The average height is rather below four feet, although many full-grown adults may be found who are very much smaller than this. They are a fierce, morose, and intractable people, though capable of forming most devoted friendships when their confidence has once been gained.’ Mark that, Watson. Now, then, listen to this. ‘They are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads, small, fierce eyes, and distorted features. Their feet and hands, however, are remarkably small. So intractable and fierce are they that all the efforts of the British official have failed to win them over in any degree. They have always been a terror to shipwrecked crews, braining the survivors with their stone-headed clubs, or shooting them with their poisoned arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast.’ Nice, amiable people, Watson! If this fellow had been left to his own unaided devices this affair might have taken an even more ghastly turn. I fancy that, even as it is, Jonathan Small would give a good deal not to have employed him.”<br/>I blushed, realizing that my preoccupation with my heart and my surprise with Miss Hope in general had caused me to forget what she had said. Thankfully I had composed myself before Holmes had finished reading from his book, “But how came he to have so singular a companion?”<br/>“Ah, that is more than I can tell. Since, however, we had already determined that Small had come from the Andamans, it is not so very wonderful that this islander should be with him. No doubt we shall know all about it in time. Look here, Watson; you look regularly done. Lie down there on the sofa, and see if I can put you to sleep.”<br/>He took up his violin from the corner, and as I stretched myself out, he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air, —his own, no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face, and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound, until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan looking down upon me.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. A Break in the Chain and the End of the Islander</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Molly is a bad influence on Mary</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was late in the afternoon before I woke, strengthened and refreshed. Sherlock Holmes still sat exactly as I had left him, save that he had laid aside his violin and was deep in a book. He looked across at me, as I stirred, and I noticed that his face was dark and troubled.<br/>“You have slept soundly,” he said. “I feared that our talk would wake you.”<br/>“I heard nothing,” I answered. “Have you had fresh news, then?”<br/>“Unfortunately, no. I confess that I am surprised and disappointed. I expected something definite by this time. Wiggins has just been up to report. He says that no trace can be found of the launch. It is a provoking check, for every hour is of importance.”<br/>“Can I do anything? I am perfectly fresh now, and quite ready for another night’s outing.”<br/>“No, we can do nothing. We can only wait. If we go ourselves, the message might come in our absence, and delay be caused. You can do what you will, but I must remain on guard.”<br/>“Then I shall call upon Miss Morstan and Miss Hope. I promised to keep them updated.”<br/>Holmes looked at me with the twinkle of a smile in his eyes, then returned to his book, “I would not tell them too much,” said Holmes. “Women are never to be entirely trusted, —not the best of them.”<br/>That is not the impression I got from your interaction with Miss Hope yesterday,” I remarked, more out of revenge for the twinkle in his eye than for his atrocious statement. The scoundrel did not take the bait so I gave up, “I shall be back in an hour or two.”<br/>“All right! Good luck! But, I say, if you are crossing the river you may as well return Toby, for I don’t think it is at all likely that we shall have any use for him now.” I took our mongrel accordingly, and left him, together with a half-sovereign, at the old naturalist’s in Pinchin Lane. <br/>I found Miss Morstan a little weary after her night’s adventures, but very eager to hear the news. Miss Hope was so full of curiosity she almost attacked me before I could make it through the door. I told them all that Miss Hope didn’t already know, suppressing, however, the more dreadful parts of the tragedy. With all my omissions, however, there was enough to startle and amaze them.<br/>“It is a romance!” cried Miss Hope. “An injured lady, half a million in treasure, a black cannibal, and a wooden-legged ruffian. They take the place of the conventional dragon or wicked earl.”<br/>“And two knights-errant to the rescue,” added Miss Morstan, with a bright glance at me.<br/>“Why, Mary, your fortune depends upon the issue of this search. I don’t think that you are nearly excited enough!”<br/>It sent a little thrill of joy to my heart to notice that Miss Morstan showed no sign of elation at the prospect. On the contrary, she gave a toss of her proud head, as though the matter were one in which she took small interest.<br/>“It is for Mr. Thaddeus Sholto that I am anxious,” she said. “Nothing else is of any consequence; but I think that he has behaved most kindly and honourably throughout. It is our duty to clear him of this dreadful and unfounded charge.”<br/>It was evening before I left them, and quite dark by the time I reached home. My companion’s book and pipe lay by his chair, but he had disappeared. I looked about in the hope of seeing a note, but there was none.<br/>“I suppose that Mr. Sherlock Holmes has gone out,” I said to Mrs. Hudson as she came up to lower the blinds.<br/>“No, sir. He has gone to his room, sir. Do you know, sir,” sinking her voice into an impressive whisper, “I am afraid for his health?”<br/>“Why so, Mrs. Hudson?”<br/>“Well, he’s that strange, sir. After you was gone, he walked and he walked, up and down, and up and down, until I was weary of the sound of his footstep. Then I heard him talking to himself and muttering, and every time the bell rang out, he came on the stairhead, with ‘What is that, Mrs. Hudson?’ And now he has slammed off to his room, but I can hear him walking away the same as ever. I hope he’s not going to be ill, sir. I ventured to say something to him about cooling medicine, but he turned on me, sir, with such a look that I don’t know how ever I got out of the room.”<br/>“I don’t think that you have any cause to be uneasy, Mrs. Hudson,” I answered. “I have seen him like this before. He has some small matter upon his mind which makes him restless.” I tried to speak lightly to our worthy landlady, but I was myself somewhat uneasy when through the long night I still from time to time heard the dull sound of his tread, and knew how his keen spirit was chafing against this involuntary inaction.<br/>At breakfast-time he looked worn and haggard, with a little fleck of feverish colour upon either cheek.<br/>“I heard you marching about in the night,” I remarked.<br/>“No, I could not sleep,” he answered. “This infernal problem is consuming me. It is too much to be balked by so petty an obstacle, when all else had been overcome. I know the men, the launch, everything; and yet I can get no news. I have set other agencies at work, and used every means at my disposal. The whole river has been searched on either side, but there is no news, nor has Mrs. Smith heard of her husband. I shall come to the conclusion soon that they have scuttled the craft. But there are objections to that.”<br/>“Or that Mrs. Smith has put us on a wrong scent.”<br/>“No, I think that may be dismissed. I had inquiries made, and there is a launch of that description.”<br/>“Could it have gone up the river?”<br/>“I have considered that possibility too, and there is a search-party who will work up as far as Richmond. If no news comes to-day, I shall start off myself to-morrow, and go for the men rather than the boat. But surely, surely, we shall hear something.”<br/>We did not, however. Not a word came to us either from Wiggins or from the other agencies. Miss Morstan and Miss Hope came by, dissatisfied with waiting to hear news at their lodgings. Unfortunately, it seemed the only thing we had to speak of were articles in most of the papers about the Norwood tragedy. They all appeared to be rather hostile to the unfortunate Thaddeus Sholto. No fresh details were to be found, however, in any of them, save that an inquest was to be held upon the following day. Holmes was dejected and morose. But God bless Miss Molly Hope! She started to ask him questions about his chemistry equipment and soon the two were engrossed in an abstruse chemical analysis which involved much heating of retorts and distilling of vapours, ending at last in a smell which fairly drove me and Miss Morstan out of the apartment, only returning to fetch Miss Hope when it was time for the young ladies to leave. Sherlock, however, continued. Up to the small hours of the morning I could hear the clinking of his test-tubes which told me that he was still engaged in his malodorous experiment.<br/>In the early dawn I woke with a start, and was surprised to find him standing by my bedside, clad in a rude sailor dress with a pea-jacket, and a coarse red scarf round his neck.<br/>“I am off down the river, Watson,” said he. “I have been turning it over in my mind, and I can see only one way out of it. It is worth trying, at all events.”<br/>“Surely, I can come with you, then?” said I.<br/>“No; you can be much more useful if you will remain here as my representative. I am loath to go, for it is quite on the cards that some message may come during the day, though Wiggins was despondent about it last night. I want you to open all notes and telegrams, and to act on your own judgment if any news should come. Can I rely upon you?”<br/>“Most certainly.”<br/>“I am afraid that you will not be able to wire to me, for I can hardly tell yet where I may find myself. If I am in luck, however, I may not be gone so very long. I shall have news of some sort or other before I get back.”<br/>I had heard nothing of him by breakfast-time. On opening the Standard, however, I found that there was a fresh allusion to the business. “With reference to the Upper Norwood tragedy,” it remarked, “we have reason to believe that the matter promises to be even more complex and mysterious than was originally supposed. Fresh evidence has shown that it is quite impossible that Mr. Thaddeus Sholto could have been in any way concerned in the matter. He and the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernstone, were both released yesterday evening. It is believed, however, that the police have a clue as to the real culprits, and that it is being prosecuted by Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard, with all his well-known energy and sagacity. Further arrests may be expected at any moment.”<br/>“That is satisfactory so far as it goes,” thought I. “Friend Sholto is safe, at any rate. I wonder what the fresh clue may be; though it seems to be a stereotyped form whenever the police have made a blunder.”<br/>I tossed the paper down upon the table, but at that moment my eye caught an advertisement in the agony column. It ran in this way:<br/>“Lost.—Whereas Mordecai Smith, boatman, and his son, Jim, left Smith’s Wharf at or about three o’clock last Tuesday morning in the steam launch Aurora, black with two red stripes, funnel black with a white band, the sum of five pounds will be paid to anyone who can give information to Mrs. Smith, at Smith’s Wharf, or at 221b Baker Street, as to the whereabouts of the said Mordecai Smith and the launch Aurora.”<br/>This was clearly Holmes’s doing. The Baker Street address was enough to prove that. It struck me as rather ingenious, because it might be read by the fugitives without their seeing in it more than the natural anxiety of a wife for her missing husband.<br/>It was a long day. Every time that a knock came to the door, or a sharp step passed in the street, I imagined that it was either Holmes returning or an answer to his advertisement. I tried to read, but my thoughts would wander off to our strange quest and to the ill-assorted and villainous pair whom we were pursuing. Could there be, I wondered, some radical flaw in my companion’s reasoning. Might he be suffering from some huge self-deception? Was it not possible that his nimble and speculative mind had built up this wild theory upon faulty premises? I had never known him to be wrong; and yet the keenest reasoner may occasionally be deceived. He was likely, I thought, to fall into error through the over-refinement of his logic, —his preference for a subtle and bizarre explanation when a plainer and more commonplace one lay ready to his hand. Yet, on the other hand, I had myself seen the evidence, and I had heard the reasons for his deductions. When I looked back on the long chain of curious circumstances, many of them trivial in themselves, but all tending in the same direction, I could not disguise from myself that even if Holmes’s explanation were incorrect the true theory must be equally outré and startling.<br/>At three o’clock in the afternoon there was a loud peal at the bell, an authoritative voice in the hall, and, to my surprise, no less a person than Mr. Athelney Jones was shown up to me. Very different was he, however, from the brusque and masterful professor of common sense who had taken over the case so confidently at Upper Norwood. His expression was downcast, and his bearing meek and even apologetic.<br/>“Good-day, sir; good-day,” said he. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes is out, I understand.”<br/>“Yes, and I cannot be sure when he will be back. But perhaps you would care to wait. Take that chair and try one of these cigars.”<br/>“Thank you; I don’t mind if I do,” said he, mopping his face with a red bandanna handkerchief.<br/>“And a whiskey-and-soda?”<br/>“Well, half a glass. It is very hot for the time of year; and I have had a good deal to worry and try me. You know my theory about this Norwood case?”<br/>“I remember that you expressed one.”<br/>“Well, I have been obliged to reconsider it. I had my net drawn tightly round Mr. Sholto, sir, when pop he went through a hole in the middle of it. He was able to prove an alibi which could not be shaken. From the time that he left his brother’s room he was never out of sight of someone or other. So, it could not be he who climbed over roofs and through trap-doors. It’s a very dark case, and my professional credit is at stake. I should be very glad of a little assistance.”<br/>“We all need help sometimes,” said I.<br/>“Your friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes is a wonderful man, sir,” said he, in a husky and confidential voice. “He’s a man who is not to be beat. I have known that young man go into a good many cases, but I never saw the case yet that he could not throw a light upon. He is irregular in his methods, and a little quick perhaps in jumping at theories, but, on the whole, I think he would have made a most promising officer, and I don’t care who knows it. I have had a wire from him this morning, by which I understand that he has got some clue to this Sholto business. Here is the message.”<br/>He took the telegram out of his pocket, and handed it to me. It was dated from Poplar at twelve o’clock. “Go to Baker Street at once,” it said. “If I have not returned, wait for me. I am close on the track of the Sholto gang. You can come with us to-night if you want to be in at the finish.”<br/>“This sounds well. He has evidently picked up the scent again,” said I.<br/>“Ah, then he has been at fault too,” exclaimed Jones, with evident satisfaction. “Even the best of us are thrown off sometimes. Of course, this may prove to be a false alarm; but it is my duty as an officer of the law to allow no chance to slip. But there is someone at the door. Perhaps this is he.”<br/>The front door to 221B was slammed. A heavy step was heard ascending the stair, as well as a great deal of cursing. It was Sherlock wearing white bushy eyebrows. Behind him were two young men.<br/>“What is it, my man?” I asked.<br/>He gestured wildly at the two young men, “These two…reckless…” the rest was unintelligible.<br/>“We were not in any danger!” said a light voice. I looked closely at the two young men and realized that they were actually Miss Morstan and Miss Hope!<br/>“Did you forget a man was murdered?” he shouted.<br/>“There was no reason for anyone to suspect us!”<br/>“What is happening?” Mr. Jones asked, as the trio had now come to the top of the stairs and he realized the two young men were two young ladies in disguise.<br/>“We thought—”<br/>“I thought,” Miss Hope interrupted her friend. Until now, she had not taken her eyes off the floor, likely to keep us from seeing the unshed tears in her eyes.<br/>“I thought,” Miss Hope continued, “That the only way the launch was not found was if it was hidden. How could one hide a boat? Why in plain sight at a boat-repairers.” Despite her distress, Miss Hope did show some pride in her deduction.<br/>“So, we set about looking, and found the Aurora, at the same time Mr. Holmes did.” Miss Morstan spoke with a great deal of pride in her friend.<br/>“And any number of things could have happened before that!” Holmes cried.<br/>“But nothing did!”<br/>Holmes gave up, “I have your criminals Mr. Jones, but you must put yourself under my orders. You are welcome to all the official credit, but you must act on the line that I point out. Is that agreed?”<br/>“Entirely, if you will help me to the men.” Mr. Jones said, despite his continued confusion.<br/>“Well, then, in the first place I shall want a fast police-boat—a steam launch—to be at the Westminster Stairs at seven o’clock.”<br/>“That is easily managed. There is always one about there; but I can step across the road and telephone to make sure.”<br/>“Then I shall want two stanch men, in case of resistance.”<br/>“There will be two or three in the boat. What else?”<br/>“When we secure the men, we shall get the treasure. One other point. I should much like to have a few details about this matter from the lips of Jonathan Small himself. You know I like to work the detail of my cases out. There is no objection to my having an unofficial interview with him, either here in my rooms or elsewhere, as long as he is efficiently guarded?”<br/>“Well, you are master of the situation. I have had no proof yet of the existence of this Jonathan Small. However, if you can catch him, I don’t see how I can refuse you an interview with him.”<br/>“That is understood, then?”<br/>“Perfectly. Is there anything else?”<br/>“No, you may as well dine with us as we have nothing to do at this moment but wait.”<br/>Our meal was a tense one. Holmes could talk exceedingly well when he chose, and this point in a case he often did choose. I’m ashamed to admit I wondered whether I preferred his black depression of the preceding days or his stewing anger now. When the cloth was cleared, Holmes glanced at his watch, and filled up three glasses with port. “One bumper,” said he, “to the success of our little expedition. And now it is high time we were off. Have you a pistol, Watson?” he glanced sharply at Miss Morstan and Miss Hope.<br/>“I have my old service-revolver in my desk.”<br/>“You had best take it, then. It is well to be prepared. I see that the cab is at the door. I ordered it for half-past six.”<br/>Before leaving I glance at Miss Morstan and she answered my unspoken question. “Things have been happening to me all my life. Molly called this mystery a romance. I decided to start living like I was in one.” I was surprised at the frustration she expressed, but could not ask further as the cab was waiting. Since then, I have been blessed to discover and explore the entire world that exists in this woman, of which her angelic composure is only a part.<br/>It was a little past seven before we reached the Westminster wharf, and found our launch awaiting us. Holmes eyed it critically.<br/>“Is there anything to mark it as a police-boat?”<br/>“Yes, —that green lamp at the side.”<br/>“Then take it off.”<br/>The small change was made, we stepped on board, and the ropes were cast off. Jones, Holmes, and I sat in the stern. There was one man at the rudder, one to tend the engines, and two burly police-inspectors forward.<br/>“Where to?” asked Jones.<br/>“To the Tower. Tell them to stop opposite Jacobson’s Yard.”<br/>Our craft was evidently a very fast one. We shot past the long lines of loaded barges as though they were stationary. Holmes smiled with satisfaction as we overhauled a river steamer and left her behind us.<br/>“We ought to be able to catch anything on the river,” he said.<br/>“Well, hardly that. But there are not many launches to beat us.”<br/>“We shall have to catch the Aurora, and she has a name for being a clipper. I will tell you how the land lies, Watson. You recollect how annoyed I was at being balked by so small a thing?”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“Well, I gave my mind a thorough rest by plunging into a chemical analysis. One of our greatest statesmen has said that a change of work is the best rest. So it is. When I had succeeded in dissolving the hydrocarbon which I was at work at, I came back to our problem of the Sholtos, and thought the whole matter out again. My boys had been up the river and down the river without result. The launch was not at any landing-stage or wharf, nor had it returned. Yet it could hardly have been scuttled to hide their traces, —though that always remained as a possible hypothesis if all else failed. I knew this man Small had a certain degree of low cunning, but I did not think him capable of anything in the nature of delicate finesse. That is usually a product of higher education. I then reflected that since he had certainly been in London some time—as we had evidence that he maintained a continual watch over Pondicherry Lodge—he could hardly leave at a moment’s notice, but would need some little time, if it were only a day, to arrange his affairs. That was the balance of probability, at any rate.”<br/>“It seems to me to be a little weak,” said I. “It is more probable that he had arranged his affairs before ever he set out upon his expedition.”<br/>“No, I hardly think so. This lair of his would be too valuable a retreat in case of need for him to give it up until he was sure that he could do without it. But a second consideration struck me. Jonathan Small must have felt that the peculiar appearance of his companion, however much he may have top-coated him, would give rise to gossip, and possibly be associated with this Norwood tragedy. He was quite sharp enough to see that. They had started from their head-quarters under cover of darkness, and he would wish to get back before it was broad light. Now, it was past three o’clock, according to Mrs. Smith, when they got the boat. It would be quite bright, and people would be about in an hour or so. Therefore, I argued, they did not go very far. They paid Smith well to hold his tongue, reserved his launch for the final escape, and hurried to their lodgings with the treasure-box. In a couple of nights, when they had time to see what view the papers took, and whether there was any suspicion, they would make their way under cover of darkness to some ship at Gravesend or in the Downs, where no doubt they had already arranged for passages to America or the Colonies. I then put myself in the place of Small, and looked at it as a man of his capacity would. I could only think of one way of doing it. I might land the launch over to some boat-builder or repairer, with directions to make a trifling change in her. She would then be removed to his shed or yard, and so be effectually concealed, while at the same time I could have her at a few hours’ notice. It is just these very simple things which are extremely liable to be overlooked. However, I determined to act on the idea. I started at once in this harmless seaman’s rig and inquired at all the yards down the river. I drew blank at fifteen, but at the sixteenth—Jacobson’s—I learned that the Aurora had been handed over to them two days ago by a wooden-legged man, with some trivial directions as to her rudder. ‘There ain’t naught amiss with her rudder,’ said the foreman. ‘There she lies, with the red streaks.’ At that moment who should come down but Mordecai Smith, the missing owner? He was rather the worse for liquor. I should not, of course, have known him, but he bellowed out his name and the name of his launch. ‘I want her to-night at eight o’clock,’ said he, — ‘eight o’clock sharp, mind, for I have two gentlemen who won’t be kept waiting.’ They had evidently paid him well, for he was very flush of money, chucking shillings about to the men. It was then that I saw Miss Hope,” Sherlock clenched his fist, “I had one of my boys follow Mr. Smith and stand sentry. He is to stand at water’s edge and wave his handkerchief to us when they start. We shall be lying off in the stream, and it will be a strange thing if we do not take men, treasure, and all.”<br/>“You have planned it all very neatly, whether they are the right men or not,” said Jones; “but if the affair were in my hands, I should have had a body of police in Jacobson’s Yard, and arrested them when they came down.”<br/>“Which would have been never. This man Small is a pretty shrewd fellow. He would send a scout on ahead, and if anything made him suspicious lie snug for another week.”<br/>“But you might have stuck to Mordecai Smith, and so been led to their hiding-place,” said I.<br/>“In that case I should have wasted my day. I think that it is a hundred to one against Smith knowing where they live. As long as he has liquor and good pay, why should he ask questions? They send him messages what to do. No, I thought over every possible course, and this is the best.”<br/>While this conversation had been proceeding, we had been shooting the long series of bridges which span the Thames. As we passed the City the last rays of the sun were gilding the cross upon the summit of St. Paul’s. It was twilight before we reached the Tower.<br/>“That is Jacobson’s Yard,” said Holmes, pointing to a bristle of masts and rigging on the Surrey side. “Cruise gently up and down here under cover of this string of lighters.” He took a pair of night-glasses from his pocket and gazed some time at the shore. “I see my sentry at his post,” he remarked, “but no sign of a handkerchief.”<br/>“Suppose we go down-stream a short way and lie in wait for them,” said Jones, eagerly. We were all eager by this time, even the policemen and stokers, who had a very vague idea of what was going forward.<br/>“We have no right to take anything for granted,” Holmes answered. “It is certainly ten to one that they go down-stream, but we cannot be certain. From this point we can see the entrance of the yard, and they can hardly see us. It will be a clear night and plenty of light. We must stay where we are. See how the folk swarm over yonder in the gaslight.”<br/>“They are coming from work in the yard.”<br/>“Dirty-looking rascals, but I suppose everyone has some little immortal spark concealed about him. You would not think it, to look at them. There is no a priori probability about it. A strange enigma is man!”<br/>“Someone calls him a soul concealed in an animal,” I suggested.<br/>“Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,” said Holmes. “He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician. But do I see a handkerchief? Surely there is a white flutter over yonder.”<br/>“Yes, it is your boy,” I cried. “I can see him plainly.”<br/>“And there is the Aurora,” exclaimed Holmes, “and going like the devil! Full speed ahead, engineer. Make after that launch with the yellow light. By heaven, I shall never forgive myself if she proves to have the heels of us!”<br/>She had slipped unseen through the yard-entrance and passed behind two or three small craft, so that she had fairly got her speed up before we saw her. Now she was flying down the stream, near in to the shore, going at a tremendous rate. Jones looked gravely at her and shook his head.<br/>“She is very fast,” he said. “I doubt if we shall catch her.”<br/>“We must catch her!” cried Holmes, between his teeth. “Heap it on, stokers! Make her do all she can! If we burn the boat, we must have them!”<br/>We were fairly after her now. The furnaces roared, and the powerful engines whizzed and clanked, like a great metallic heart. Her sharp, steep prow cut through the river-water and sent two rolling waves to right and to left of us. With every throb of the engines we sprang and quivered like a living thing. One great yellow lantern in our bows threw a long, flickering funnel of light in front of us. Right ahead a dark blur upon the water showed where the Aurora lay, and the swirl of white foam behind her spoke of the pace at which she was going. We flashed past barges, steamers, merchant-vessels, in and out, behind this one and round the other. Voices hailed us out of the darkness, but still the Aurora thundered on, and still we followed close upon her track.<br/>“Pile it on, men, pile it on!” cried Holmes, looking down into the engine-room, while the fierce glow from below beat upon his eager, aquiline face. “Get every pound of steam you can.”<br/>“I think we gain a little,” said Jones, with his eyes on the Aurora.<br/>“I am sure of it,” said I. “We shall be up with her in a very few minutes.”<br/>At that moment, however, as our evil fate would have it, a tug with three barges in tow blundered in between us. It was only by putting our helm hard down that we avoided a collision, and before we could round them and recover our way the Aurora had gained a good two hundred yards. She was still, however, well in view, and the murky uncertain twilight was setting into a clear starlit night. Our boilers were strained to their utmost, and the frail shell vibrated and creaked with the fierce energy which was driving us along. We had shot through the Pool, past the West India Docks, down the long Deptford Reach, and up again after rounding the Isle of Dogs. The dull blur in front of us resolved itself now clearly enough into the dainty Aurora. Jones turned our search-light upon her, so that we could plainly see the figures upon her deck. One man sat by the stern, with something black between his knees over which he stooped. Beside him lay a dark mass which looked like a Newfoundland dog. The boy held the tiller, while against the red glare of the furnace I could see old Smith, stripped to the waist, and shoveling coals for dear life. They may have had some doubt at first as to whether we were really pursuing them, but now as we followed every winding and turning which, they took there could no longer be any question about it. At Greenwich we were about three hundred paces behind them. At Blackwall we could not have been more than two hundred and fifty. I have coursed many creatures in many countries during my checkered career, but never did sport give me such a wild thrill as this mad, flying man-hunt down the Thames. Steadily we drew in upon them, yard by yard. In the silence of the night we could hear the panting and clanking of their machinery. The man in the stern still crouched upon the deck, and his arms were moving as though he were busy, while every now and then he would look up and measure with a glance the distance which still separated us. Nearer we came and nearer. Jones yelled to them to stop. We were not more than four boat’s lengths behind them, both boats flying at a tremendous pace. It was a clear reach of the river, with Barking Level upon one side and the melancholy Plumstead Marshes upon the other. At our hail the man in the stern sprang up from the deck and shook his two clinched fists at us, cursing the while in a high, cracked voice. He was a good-sized, powerful man, and as he stood poising himself with legs astride, I could see that from the thigh downwards there was but a wooden stump upon the right side. At the sound of his strident, angry cries there was movement in the huddled bundle upon the deck. It straightened itself into a little black man—the smallest I have ever seen—with a great, misshapen head and a shock of tangled, disheveled hair. Holmes had already drawn his revolver, and I whipped out mine at the sight of this savage, distorted creature. He was wrapped in some sort of dark ulster or blanket, which left only his face exposed; but that face was enough to give a man a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with a half animal fury.<br/>“Fire if he raises his hand,” said Holmes, quietly. We were within a boat’s-length by this time, and almost within touch of our quarry. I can see the two of them now as they stood, the white man with his legs far apart, shrieking out curses, and the unhallowed dwarf with his hideous face, and his strong yellow teeth gnashing at us in the light of our lantern.<br/>It was well that we had so clear a view of him. Even as we looked, he plucked out from under his covering a short, round piece of wood, like a school-ruler, and clapped it to his lips. Our pistols rang out together. He whirled round, threw up his arms, and with a kind of choking cough fell sideways into the stream. I caught one glimpse of his venomous, menacing eyes amid the white swirl of the waters. At the same moment the wooden-legged man threw himself upon the rudder and put it hard down, so that his boat made straight in for the southern bank, while we shot past her stern, only clearing her by a few feet. We were round after her in an instant, but she was already nearly at the bank. It was a wild and desolate place, where the moon glimmered upon a wide expanse of marsh-land, with pools of stagnant water and beds of decaying vegetation. The launch with a dull thud ran up upon the mud-bank, with her bow in the air and her stern flush with the water. The fugitive sprang out, but his stump instantly sank its whole length into the sodden soil. In vain he struggled and writhed. Not one step could he possibly take either forwards or backwards. He yelled in impotent rage, and kicked frantically into the mud with his other foot, but his struggles only bored his wooden pin the deeper into the sticky bank. When we brought our launch alongside, he was so firmly anchored that it was only by throwing the end of a rope over his shoulders that we were able to haul him out, and to drag him, like some evil fish, over our side. The two Smiths, father and son, sat sullenly in their launch, but came aboard meekly enough when commanded. The Aurora herself we hauled off and made fast to our stern. A solid iron chest of Indian workmanship stood upon the deck. This, there could be no question, was the same that had contained the ill-omened treasure of the Sholtos. There was no key, but it was of considerable weight, so we transferred it carefully to our own little cabin. As we steamed slowly up-stream again, we flashed our search-light in every direction, but there was no sign of the Islander. Somewhere in the dark ooze at the bottom of the Thames lie the bones of that strange visitor to our shores.<br/>“See here,” said Holmes, pointing to the wooden hatchway. “We were hardly quick enough with our pistols.” There, sure enough, just behind where we had been standing, stuck one of those murderous darts which we knew so well. It must have whizzed between us at the instant that we fired. Holmes smiled at it and shrugged his shoulders in his easy fashion, but I confess that it turned me sick to think of the horrible death which had passed so close to us that night.</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The Great Agra Treasure</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Our captive sat in the cabin opposite to the iron box which he had done so much and waited so long to gain. He was a sunburned, reckless-eyed fellow, with a network of lines and wrinkles all over his mahogany features, which told of a hard, open-air life. There was a singular prominence about his bearded chin which marked a man who was not to be easily turned from his purpose. His age may have been fifty or thereabouts, for his black, curly hair was thickly shot with grey. His face in repose was not an unpleasing one, though his heavy brows and aggressive chin gave him, as I had lately seen, a terrible expression when moved to anger. He sat now with his handcuffed hands upon his lap, and his head sunk upon his breast, while he looked with his keen, twinkling eyes at the box which had been the cause of his ill-doings. It seemed to me that there was more sorrow than anger in his rigid and contained countenance. Once he looked up at me with a gleam of something like humour in his eyes.<br/>“Well, Jonathan Small,” said Holmes, lighting a cigar, “I am sorry that it has come to this.”<br/>“And so am I, sir,” he answered, frankly. “I don’t believe that I can swing over the job. I give you my word on the book that I never raised hand against Mr. Sholto. It was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not undo it again.”<br/>“Have a cigar,” said Holmes; “and you had best take a pull out of my flask, for you are very wet. How could you expect so small and weak a man as this black fellow to overpower Mr. Sholto and hold him while you were climbing the rope?”<br/>“You seem to know as much about it as if you were there, sir. The truth is that I hoped to find the room clear. I knew the habits of the house pretty well, and it was the time when Mr. Sholto usually went down to his supper. I shall make no secret of the business. The best defence that I can make is just the simple truth. Now, if it had been the old major, I would have swung for him with a light heart. I would have thought no more of knifing him than of smoking this cigar. But it’s cursed hard that I should be lagged over this young Sholto, with whom I had no quarrel whatever.”<br/>“You are under the charge of Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard. He is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you do I hope that I may be of use to you. I think I can prove that the poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached the room.”<br/>“That he was, sir. I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw him grinning at me with his head on his shoulder as I climbed through the window. It fairly shook me, sir. I’d have half killed Tonga for it if he had not scrambled off. That was how he came to leave his club, and some of his darts too, as he tells me, which I dare say helped to put you on our track; though how you kept on it is more than I can tell. I don’t feel no malice against you for it. But it does seem a queer thing,” he added, with a bitter smile, “that I who have a fair claim to nigh upon half a million of money should spend the first half of my life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the other half digging drains at Dartmoor. It was an evil day for me when first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the man who owned it. To him it brought murder, to Major Sholto it brought fear and guilt, to me it has meant slavery for life.”<br/>At this moment Athelney Jones thrust his broad face and heavy shoulders into the tiny cabin. “Quite a family party,” he remarked. “I think I shall have a pull at that flask, Holmes. Well, I think we may all congratulate each other. Pity we didn’t take the other alive; but there was no choice. I say, Holmes, you must confess that you cut it rather fine. It was all we could do to overhaul her.”<br/>“All is well that ends well,” said Holmes. “But I certainly did not know that the Aurora was such a clipper.”<br/>“Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that if he had had another man to help him with the engines, we should never have caught her. He swears he knew nothing of this Norwood business.”<br/>“Neither he did,” cried our prisoner, — “not a word. I chose his launch because I heard that she was a flier. We told him nothing, but we paid him well, and he was to get something handsome if we reached our vessel, the Esmeralda, at Gravesend, outward bound for the Brazils.”<br/>“Well, if he has done no wrong, we shall see that no wrong comes to him. If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are not so quick in condemning them.” It was amusing to notice how the consequential Jones was already beginning to give himself airs on the strength of the capture. From the slight smile which played over Sherlock Holmes’s face, I could see that the speech had not been lost upon him.<br/>“We will be at Vauxhall Bridge presently,” said Holmes, “I expect Miss Hope and Miss Morstan have gone back to their rooms. Take the box and an inspector. You will drive, no doubt?”<br/>“Yes, I shall drive.”<br/>“It is a pity there is no key, that we may make an inventory first. You will have to break it open. Where is the key, my man?”<br/>“At the bottom of the river,” said Small, shortly.<br/>“Hum! There was no use your giving this unnecessary trouble. We have had work enough already through you. However, doctor, I need not warn you to be careful. Bring the box back with you to the Baker Street rooms. You will find us there, on our way to the station.”<br/>They landed me at Vauxhall, with my heavy iron box, and with a bluff, genial inspector as my companion. A quarter of an hour’s drive brought us to the lodgings of Miss Morstan and Miss Hope. I went, box in hand, leaving the obliging inspector in the cab.<br/>She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and waist. The soft light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back in the basket chair, playing over her sweet, grave face, and tinting with a dull, metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy. At the sound of my foot-fall she sprang to her feet, however, and a bright flush of surprise and of pleasure coloured her pale cheeks.<br/>“I heard a cab drive up,” she said. “Molly has already gone to bed. What news have you brought?”<br/>“I have brought something better than news,” said I, putting down the box upon the table and speaking jovially and boisterously, though my heart was heavy within me. “I have brought you something which is worth all the news in the world. I have brought you a fortune.”<br/>She glanced at the iron box. “Is that the treasure, then?” she asked, coolly enough.<br/>“Yes, this is the great Agra treasure. Half of it is yours and half is Thaddeus Sholto’s. You will have a couple of hundred thousand each. Think of that! An annuity of ten thousand pounds. There will be few richer young ladies in England. Is it not glorious?”<br/>I think that I must have been rather overacting my delight, and that she detected a hollow ring in my congratulations, for I saw her eyebrows rise a little, and she glanced at me curiously.<br/>“If I have it,” said she, “I owe it to you.”<br/>“No, no,” I answered, “not to me, but to my friend Sherlock Holmes. With all the will in the world, I could never have followed up a clue which has taxed even his analytical genius. As it was, we very nearly lost it at the last moment.”<br/>“Pray sit down and tell me all about it, Dr. Watson,” said she.<br/>I narrated briefly our expedition in the evening, and the wild chase down the Thames. She listened with parted lips and shining eyes to my recital of our adventures. When I spoke of the dart which had so narrowly missed us, she turned so white that I feared that she was about to faint.<br/>“It is nothing,” she said, as I hastened to pour her out some water. “I am all right again. It was a shock to me to hear that I had placed my friends in such horrible peril.”<br/>“That is all over,” I answered. “It was nothing. I will tell you no more gloomy details. Let us turn to something brighter. There is the treasure. What could be brighter than that? I got leave to bring it with me, thinking that it would interest you to be the first to see it.”<br/>“It would be of the greatest interest to me,” she said. There was no eagerness in her voice, however. It had struck her, doubtless, that it might seem ungracious upon her part to be indifferent to a prize which had cost so much to win.<br/>“What a pretty box!” she said, stooping over it. “This is Indian work, I suppose?”<br/>“Yes; it is Benares metal-work.”<br/>“And so heavy!” she exclaimed, trying to raise it. “The box alone must be of some value. Where is the key?”<br/>“Small threw it into the Thames,” I answered. “I must borrow Mrs. Forrester’s poker.” There was in the front a thick and broad hasp, wrought in the image of a sitting Buddha. Under this I thrust the end of the poker and twisted it outward as a lever. The hasp sprang open with a loud snap. With trembling fingers, I flung back the lid. We both stood gazing in astonishment. The box was empty!<br/>No wonder that it was heavy. The iron-work was two-thirds of an inch thick all round. It was massive, well made, and solid, like a chest constructed to carry things of great price, but not one shred or crumb of metal or jewelry lay within it. It was absolutely and completely empty.<br/>“The treasure is lost,” said Miss Morstan, calmly.<br/>As I listened to the words and realised what they meant, a great shadow seemed to pass from my soul. I did not know how this Agra treasure had weighed me down, until now that it was finally removed. It was selfish, no doubt, disloyal, wrong, but I could realise nothing save that the golden barrier was gone from between us. “Thank God!” I ejaculated from my very heart.<br/>She looked at me with a quick, questioning smile. “Why do you say that?” she asked.<br/>“Because you are within my reach again,” I said, taking her hand. She did not withdraw it. “Because I love you, Mary, as truly as ever a man loved a woman. Because this treasure, these riches, sealed my lips. Now that they are gone, I can tell you how I love you. That is why I said, ‘Thank God.’”<br/>“Then I say, ‘Thank God,’ too,” she whispered, as I drew her to my side. Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained one.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm skipping most of the next chapter which is basically just a Johnathan Small monologue. Morstan and Sholto screwed him over and he threw the treasure in the river so no one could have it. The mystery after this is the Hound of the Baskervilles.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. I Cannot Congratulate You</h2></a>
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    <p>“Well, and there is the end of our little drama,” I remarked, after we had set some time smoking in silence. “I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective.”<br/>He gave a most dismal groan. “I feared as much,” said he. “I really cannot congratulate you.”<br/>I was a little hurt. “Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?” I asked.<br/>“Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way: witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.”<br/>“I trust,” said I, laughing, “that my judgment may survive the ordeal. I think your judgement would as well. But you look weary.”<br/>“Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week.”<br/>“Strange,” said I, “how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.”<br/>“Yes,” he answered, “there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. By the way, à propos of this Norwood business, you see that they had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none other than Lal Rao, the butler: so, Jones actually has the undivided honour of having caught one fish in his great haul.”<br/>“The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”<br/>“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. The Curse of the Baskervilles</h2></a>
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    <p>Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,” was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.<br/>“Well, Watson, what do you make of it?”<br/>Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.<br/>“How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.”<br/>“I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,” said he. “But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor’s stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.”<br/>“I think,” said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, “that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation.”<br/>“Good!” said Holmes. “Excellent!”<br/>“I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot.”<br/>“Why so?”<br/>“Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it.”<br/>“Perfectly sound!” said Holmes.<br/>“And then again, there is the ‘friends of the C.C.H.’ I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return.”<br/>“Really, Watson, you excel yourself,” said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. “I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.”<br/>He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.<br/>“Interesting, though elementary,” said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. “There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions.”<br/>“Has anything escaped me?” I asked with some self-importance. “I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?”<br/>“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me, I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal.”<br/>“Then I was right.”<br/>“To that extent.”<br/>“But that was all.”<br/>“No, no, my dear Watson, not all—by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials ‘C.C.’ are placed before that hospital the words ‘Charing Cross’ very naturally suggest themselves.”<br/>“You may be right.”<br/>“The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis, we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor.”<br/>“Well, then, supposing that ‘C.C.H.’ does stand for ‘Charing Cross Hospital,’ what further inferences may we draw?”<br/>“Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!”<br/>“I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country.”<br/>“I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start a practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?”<br/>“It certainly seems probable.”<br/>“Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff, he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician—little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago—the date is on the stick. So, your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff.”<br/>I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling.<br/>“As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you,” said I, “but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man’s age and professional career.” From my small medical shelf, I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud.<br/>“Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled ‘Is Disease a Reversion?’ Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of ‘Some Freaks of Atavism’ (Lancet 1882). ‘Do We Progress?’ (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow.”<br/>“No mention of that local hunt, Watson,” said Holmes with a mischievous smile, “but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room.”<br/>“And the dog?”<br/>“Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick, the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog’s jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been—yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel.”<br/>He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I glanced up in surprise.<br/>“My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?”<br/>“For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don’t move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!”<br/>The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, grey eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes’s hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy. “I am so very glad,” said he. “I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that stick for the world.”<br/>“A presentation, I see,” said Holmes.<br/>“Yes, sir.”<br/>“From Charing Cross Hospital?”<br/>“From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage.”<br/>“Dear, dear, that’s bad!” said Holmes, shaking his head.<br/>Dr. Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment. “Why was it bad?”<br/>“Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?”<br/>“Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a home of my own.”<br/>“Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all,” said Holmes. “And now, Dr. James Mortimer—”<br/>“Mister, sir, Mister—a humble M.R.C.S.”<br/>“And a man of precise mind, evidently.”<br/>“A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and not—”<br/>“No, this is my friend Dr. Watson.”<br/>“Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”<br/>Sherlock Holmes waved our strange visitor into a chair. “You are an enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in mine,” said he. “I observe from your forefinger that you make your own cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one.”<br/>The man drew out paper and tobacco and twirled the one up in the other with surprising dexterity. He had long, quivering fingers as agile and restless as the antennæ of an insect.<br/>Holmes was silent, but his little darting glances showed me the interest which he took in our curious companion. “I presume, sir,” said he at last, “that it was not merely for the purpose of examining my skull that you have done me the honour to call here last night and again today?”<br/>“No, sir, no; though I am happy to have had the opportunity of doing that as well. I came to you, Mr. Holmes, because I recognized that I am myself an unpractical man and because I am suddenly confronted with a most serious and extraordinary problem. Recognizing, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe—”<br/>“Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?” asked Holmes with some asperity.<br/>“To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.”<br/>“Then had you not better consult him?”<br/>“I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently—”<br/>“Just a little,” said Holmes. “I think, Dr. Mortimer, you would do wisely if without more ado you would kindly tell me plainly what the exact nature of the problem is in which you demand my assistance.”<br/>“I have in my pocket a manuscript,” said Dr. James Mortimer.<br/>“I observed it as you entered the room,” said Holmes.<br/>“It is an old manuscript.”<br/>“Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery.”<br/>“How can you say that, sir?”<br/>“You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject. I put that at 1730.”<br/>“The exact date is 1742.” Dr. Mortimer drew it from his breast-pocket. “This family paper was committed to my care by Sir Charles Baskerville, whose sudden and tragic death some three months ago created so much excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal friend as well as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd, practical, and as unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this document very seriously, and his mind was prepared for just such an end as did eventually overtake him.”<br/>Holmes stretched out his hand for the manuscript and flattened it upon his knee. “You will observe, Watson, the alternative use of the long s and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix the date.”<br/>I looked over his shoulder at the yellow paper and the faded script. At the head was written: “Baskerville Hall,” and below in large, scrawling figures: “1742.”<br/>“It appears to be a statement of some sort.”<br/>“Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the Baskerville family.”<br/>“But I understand that it is something more modern and practical upon which you wish to consult me?”<br/>“Most modern. A most practical, pressing matter, which must be decided within twenty-four hours. But the manuscript is short and is intimately connected with the affair. With your permission I will read it to you.”<br/>Holmes leaned back in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, old-world narrative:<br/>“Of the origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles there have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct line from Hugo Baskerville, and as I had the story from my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down with all belief that it occurred even as is here set forth. And I would have you believe, my sons, that the same Justice which punishes sin may also most graciously forgive it, and that no ban is so heavy but that by prayer and repentance it may be removed. Learn then from this story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to be circumspect in the future, that those foul passions whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not again be loosed to our undoing.<br/>    “Know then that in the time of the Great Rebellion (the history of which by the learned Lord Clarendon I most earnestly commend to your attention) this Manor of Baskerville was held by Hugo of that name, nor can it be gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless man. This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a by-word through the West. It chanced that this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held lands near the Baskerville estate. But the young maiden, being discreet and of good repute, would ever avoid him, for she feared his evil name. So, it came to pass that one Michaelmas this Hugo, with five or six of his idle and wicked companions, stole down upon the farm and carried off the maiden, her father and brothers being from home, as he well knew. When they had brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper chamber, while Hugo and his friends sat down to a long carouse, as was their nightly custom. Now, the poor lass upstairs was like to have her wits turned at the singing and shouting and terrible oaths which came up to her from below, for they say that the words used by Hugo Baskerville, when he was in wine, were such as might blast the man who said them. At last in the stress of her fear she did that which might have daunted the bravest or most active man, for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered (and still covers) the south wall she came down from under the eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues betwixt the Hall and her father’s farm.<br/>    “It chanced that some little time later Hugo left his guests to carry food and drink—with other worse things, perchance—to his captive, and so found the cage empty and the bird escaped. Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for, rushing down the stairs into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the great table, flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench. And while the revelers stood aghast at the fury of the man, one more wicked or, it may be, more drunken than the rest, cried out that they should put the hounds upon her. Whereat Hugo ran from the house, crying to his grooms that they should saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the hounds a kerchief of the maid’s, he swung them to the line, and so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor.<br/>    “Now, for some space the revelers stood agape, unable to understand all that had been done in such haste. But anon their bemused wits awoke to the nature of the deed which was like to be done upon the moorlands. Everything was now in an uproar, some calling for their pistols, some for their horses, and some for another flask of wine. But at length some sense came back to their crazed minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took horse and started in pursuit. The moon shone clear above them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course which, the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach her own home.<br/>    “They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to him to know if he had seen the hunt. And the man, as the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track. ‘But I have seen more than that,’ said he, ‘for Hugo Baskerville passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels.’ So, the drunken squires cursed the shepherd and rode onward. But soon their skins turned cold, for there came a galloping across the moor, and the black mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing bridle and empty saddle. Then the revelers rode close together, for a great fear was on them, but they still followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone, would have been right glad to have turned his horse’s head. Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last upon the hounds. These, though known for their valour and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them.<br/>    “The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you may guess, than when they started. The most of them would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest, or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal. Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of those great stones, still to be seen there, which were set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days.<br/>    “Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since. If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious. Yet may we shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence, which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy Writ. To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.<br/>    “[This from Hugo Baskerville to his sons Rodger and John, with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their sister Elizabeth.]”<br/>When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative, he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire.<br/>“Well?” said he.<br/>“Do you not find it interesting?”<br/>“To a collector of fairy tales.”<br/>Dr. Mortimer drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket.<br/>“Now, Mr. Holmes, we will give you something a little more recent. This is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville which occurred a few days before that date.”<br/>My friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our visitor readjusted his glasses and began:<br/>“The recent sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville, whose name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over the county. Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of character and extreme generosity had won the affection and respect of all who had been brought into contact with him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing to find a case where the scion of an old county family which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known, made large sums of money in South African speculation. More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns against them, he realised his gains and returned to England with them. It is only two years since he took up his residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations to local and county charities have been frequently chronicled in these columns.<br/>    “The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Charles cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of those rumours to which local superstition has given rise. There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to imagine that death could be from any but natural causes. Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind. In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles’s health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect.<br/>    “The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At twelve o’clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open, became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles’s footmarks were easily traced down the alley. Halfway down this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor. There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some little time here. He then proceeded down the alley, and it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered. One fact which has not been explained is the statement of Barrymore that his master’s footprints altered their character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking upon his toes. One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears by his own confession to have been the worse for drink. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came. No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Charles’s person, and though the doctor’s evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion—so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him—it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspnœa and death from cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing organic disease, and the coroner’s jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost importance that Sir Charles’s heir should settle at the Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville, if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville’s younger brother. The young man when last heard of was in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a view to informing him of his good fortune.”<br/>Dr. Mortimer refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket. “Those are the public facts, Mr. Holmes, in connection with the death of Sir Charles Baskerville.”<br/>“I must thank you,” said Sherlock Holmes, “for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This article, you say, contains all the public facts?”<br/>“It does.”<br/>“Then let me have the private ones.” He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression.<br/>“In doing so,” said Dr. Mortimer, who had begun to show signs of some strong emotion, “I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone. My motive for withholding it from the coroner’s inquiry is that a man of science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that Baskerville Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation. For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank.<br/>“The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason, I saw a good deal of Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, there are no other men of education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot.<br/>“Within the last few months, it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles’s nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart—so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement.<br/>“I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening some three weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his excitement had no justification.<br/>“It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe.<br/>“On the night of Sir Charles’s death Barrymore, the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was sitting up late, I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour of the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited, I remarked the change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there were no other footsteps save those of Barrymore on the soft gravel, and finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until my arrival. Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did—some little distance off, but fresh and clear.”<br/>“Footprints?”<br/>“Footprints.”<br/>“A man’s or a woman’s?”<br/>Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered.<br/>“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Sir Henry Baskerville</h2></a>
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    <p>I confess at these words a shudder passed through me. There was a thrill in the doctor’s voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Holmes leaned forward in his excitement and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested.<br/>
“You saw this?”<br/>
“As clearly as I see you.”<br/>
“And you said nothing?”<br/>
“What was the use?”<br/>
“How was it that no one else saw it?”<br/>
“The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don’t suppose I should have done so had I not known this legend.”<br/>
“There are many sheep-dogs on the moor?”<br/>
“No doubt, but this was no sheep-dog.”<br/>
“You say it was large?”<br/>
“Enormous.”<br/>
“But it had not approached the body?”<br/>
“No.”<br/>
“What sort of night was it?’<br/>
“Damp and raw.”<br/>
“But not actually raining?”<br/>
“No.”<br/>
“What is the alley like?”<br/>
“There are two lines of old yew hedge, twelve feet high and impenetrable. The walk in the centre is about eight feet across.”<br/>
“Is there anything between the hedges and the walk?”<br/>
“Yes, there is a strip of grass about six feet broad on either side.”<br/>
“I understand that the yew hedge is penetrated at one point by a gate?”<br/>
“Yes, the wicket-gate which leads on to the moor.”<br/>
“Is there any other opening?”<br/>
“None.”<br/>
“So that to reach the yew alley one either has to come down it from the house or else to enter it by the moor-gate?”<br/>
“There is an exit through a summer-house at the far end.”<br/>
“Had Sir Charles reached this?”<br/>
“No; he lay about fifty yards from it.”<br/>
“Now, tell me, Dr. Mortimer—and this is important—the marks which you saw were on the path and not on the grass?”<br/>
“No marks could show on the grass.”<br/>
“Were they on the same side of the path as the moor-gate?”<br/>
“Yes; they were on the edge of the path on the same side as the moor-gate.”<br/>
“You interest me exceedingly. Another point. Was the wicket-gate closed?”<br/>
“Closed and padlocked.”<br/>
“How high was it?”<br/>
“About four feet high.”<br/>
“Then anyone could have got over it?”<br/>
“Yes.”<br/>
“And what marks did you see by the wicket-gate?”<br/>
“None in particular.”<br/>
“Good heaven! Did no one examine?”<br/>
“Yes, I examined, myself.”<br/>
“And found nothing?”<br/>
“It was all very confused. Sir Charles had evidently stood there for five or ten minutes.”<br/>
“How do you know that?”<br/>
“Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar.”<br/>
“Excellent! This is a colleague, Watson, after our own heart. But the marks?”<br/>
“He had left his own marks all over that small patch of gravel. I could discern no others.”<br/>
Sherlock Holmes struck his hand against his knee with an impatient gesture.<br/>
“If I had only been there!” he cried. “It is evidently a case of extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to the scientific expert. That gravel page upon which I might have read so much has been long ere this smudged by the rain and defaced by the clogs of curious peasants. Oh, Dr. Mortimer, Dr. Mortimer, to think that you should not have called me in! You have indeed much to answer for.”<br/>
“I could not call you in, Mr. Holmes, without disclosing these facts to the world, and I have already given my reasons for not wishing to do so. Besides, besides—”<br/>
“Why do you hesitate?”<br/>
“There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless.”<br/>
“You mean that the thing is supernatural?”<br/>
“I did not positively say so.”<br/>
“No, but you evidently think it.”<br/>
“Since the tragedy, Mr. Holmes, there have come to my ears several incidents which are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature.”<br/>
“For example?”<br/>
“I find that before the terrible event occurred several people had seen a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Baskerville demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night.”<br/>
“And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?”<br/>
“I do not know what to believe.”<br/>
Holmes shrugged his shoulders. “I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world,” said he. “In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task. Yet you must admit that the footmark is material.”<br/>
“The original hound was material enough to tug a man’s throat out, and yet he was diabolical as well.”<br/>
“I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists. But now, Dr. Mortimer, tell me this. If you hold these views, why have you come to consult me at all? You tell me in the same breath that it is useless to investigate Sir Charles’s death, and that you desire me to do it.”<br/>
“I did not say that I desired you to do it.”<br/>
“Then, how can I assist you?”<br/>
“By advising me as to what I should do with Sir Henry Baskerville, who arrives at Waterloo Station”—Dr. Mortimer looked at his watch— “in exactly one hour and a quarter.”<br/>
“He being the heir?”<br/>
“Yes. On the death of Sir Charles, we inquired for this young gentleman and found that he had been farming in Canada. From the accounts which have reached us he is an excellent fellow in every way. I speak now not as a medical man but as a trustee and executor of Sir Charles’s will.”<br/>
“There is no other claimant, I presume?”<br/>
“None. The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger Baskerville, the youngest of three brothers of whom poor Sir Charles was the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad Henry. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of the old masterful Baskerville strain and was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Hugo. He made England too hot to hold him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever. Henry is the last of the Baskervilles. In one hour and five minutes I meet him at Waterloo Station. I have had a wire that he arrived at Southampton this morning. Now, Mr. Holmes, what would you advise me to do with him?”<br/>
“Why should he not go to the home of his fathers?”<br/>
“It seems natural, does it not? And yet, consider that every Baskerville who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Charles could have spoken with me before his death, he would have warned me against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Charles will crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. I fear lest I should be swayed too much by my own obvious interest in the matter, and that is why I bring the case before you and ask for your advice.”<br/>
Holmes considered for a little time.<br/>
“Put into plain words, the matter is this,” said he. “In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a Baskerville—that is your opinion?”<br/>
“At least I might go the length of saying that there is some evidence that this may be so.”<br/>
“Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire. A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing.”<br/>
“You put the matter more flippantly, Mr. Holmes, than you would probably do if you were brought into personal contact with these things. Your advice, then, as I understand it, is that the young man will be as safe in Devonshire as in London. He comes in fifty minutes. What would you recommend?”<br/>
“I recommend, sir, that you take a cab, call off your spaniel who is scratching at my front door, and proceed to Waterloo to meet Sir Henry Baskerville.”<br/>
“And then?”<br/>
“And then you will say nothing to him at all until I have made up my mind about the matter.”<br/>
“How long will it take you to make up your mind?”<br/>
“Twenty-four hours. At ten o’clock tomorrow, Dr. Mortimer, I will be much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Henry Baskerville with you.”<br/>
“I will do so, Mr. Holmes.” He scribbled the appointment on his shirt-cuff and hurried off in his strange, peering, absent-minded fashion. Holmes stopped him at the head of the stair.<br/>
“Only one more question, Dr. Mortimer. You say that before Sir Charles Baskerville’s death several people saw this apparition upon the moor?”<br/>
“Three people did.”<br/>
“Did any see it after?”<br/>
“I have not heard of any.”<br/>
“Thank you. Good-morning.”<br/>
Holmes returned to his seat with that quiet look of inward satisfaction which meant that he had a congenial task before him.<br/>
“Going out, Watson?”<br/>
“Unless I can help you.”<br/>
“No, my dear fellow, it is at the hour of action that I turn to you for aid. But this is splendid, really unique from some points of view. When you pass Bradley’s, would you ask him to send up a pound of the strongest shag tobacco? Thank you. It would be as well if you could make it convenient not to return before evening. Then I should be very glad to compare impressions as to this most interesting problem which has been submitted to us this morning.”<br/>
I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. I therefore went home to my wife.<br/>
When I started to tell my wife of the new mystery which engaged Mr. Holmes, I was surprised to learn that she already knew most of the details. “Lord Hope and Sir Charles Baskervilles were good friends, sharing an interest in the sciences. I received word from Molly today about Sir Charles’ death. I do grieve for his poor nephew.”<br/>
“So, you have heard of this curse?”<br/>
“Of course, but you say that this Dr. Mortimer has actually seen footprints,” when I confirmed she said, “Well, that certainly sounds like a puzzle for Mr. Holmes to solve.”<br/>
I did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o’clock when I found myself in the sitting-room once more.<br/>
My first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him.<br/>
“Caught cold, Watson?” said he.<br/>
“No, it’s this poisonous atmosphere.”<br/>
“I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it.”<br/>
“Thick! It is intolerable.”<br/>
“Open the window, then!”<br/>
“I have been to Devonshire,” Holmes declared.<br/>
“In spirit?”<br/>
“Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left, I sent down to Stamford’s for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about.”<br/>
“A large-scale map, I presume?”<br/>
“Very large.”<br/>
He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. “Here you have the particular district which concerns us. That is Baskerville Hall in the middle.”<br/>
“With a wood round it?”<br/>
“Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist—Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again.”<br/>
“It must be a wild place.”<br/>
“Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men—”<br/>
“Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.”<br/>
“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we’ll shut that window again, if you don’t mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?”<br/>
“Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day.”<br/>
“What do you make of it?”<br/>
“It is very bewildering.”<br/>
“It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?”<br/>
“Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley.”<br/>
“He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?”<br/>
“What then?”<br/>
“He was running, Watson—running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart—and fell dead upon his face.”<br/>
“Running from what?”<br/>
“There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.”<br/>
“How can you say that?”<br/>
“I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy’s evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the yew alley rather than in his own house?”<br/>
“You think that he was waiting for someone?”<br/>
“The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?”<br/>
“But he went out every evening.”<br/>
“I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry Baskerville in the morning.”<br/>
Holmes waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman.<br/>
“This is Sir Henry Baskerville,” said Dr. Mortimer.<br/>
“Why, yes,” said he, “and the strange thing is, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own account. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I’ve had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give it.”<br/>
“Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?”<br/>
“Nothing of much importance, Mr. Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning.”<br/>
He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, greyish in colour. The address, “Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel,” was printed in rough characters; the post-mark “Charing Cross,” and the date of posting the preceding evening.<br/>
“Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?” asked Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor.<br/>
“No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer.”<br/>
“But Dr. Mortimer was no doubt already stopping there?”<br/>
“No, I had been staying with a friend,” said the doctor.<br/>
“There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel.”<br/>
“Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements.” Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran:<br/>
As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.<br/>
The word “moor” only was printed in ink.<br/>
“Now,” said Sir Henry Baskerville, “perhaps you will tell me, Mr. Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?”<br/>
“What do you make of it, Dr. Mortimer? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?”<br/>
“No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural.”<br/>
“What business?” asked Sir Henry sharply. “It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs.”<br/>
“You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I promise you that,” said Sherlock Holmes. “We will confine ourselves for the present with your permission to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday’s Times, Watson?”<br/>
“It is here in the corner.”<br/>
“Might I trouble you for it—the inside page, please, with the leading articles?” He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. “Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an extract from it.<br/>
‘You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.’<br/>
“What do you think of that, Watson?” cried Holmes in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. “Don’t you think that is an admirable sentiment?”<br/>
Dr. Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me.<br/>
“I don’t know much about the tariff and things of that kind,” said he, “but it seems to me we’ve got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned.”<br/>
“On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence.”<br/>
“No, I confess that I see no connection.”<br/>
“And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. ‘You,’ ‘your,’ ‘your,’ ‘life,’ ‘reason,’ ‘value,’ ‘keep away,’ ‘from the.’ Don’t you see now whence these words have been taken?”<br/>
“By thunder, you’re right! Well, if that isn’t smart!” cried Sir Henry.<br/>
“If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that ‘keep away’ and ‘from the’ are cut out in one piece.”<br/>
“Well, now—so it is!”<br/>
“Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined,” said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. “I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?”<br/>
“I presume, Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that of an Esquimau?”<br/>
“Most certainly.”<br/>
“But how?”<br/>
“Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the—”<br/>
“But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young, I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday’s issue.”<br/>
“So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes,” said Sir Henry Baskerville, “someone cut out this message with a scissors—”<br/>
“Nail-scissors,” said Holmes. “You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over ‘keep away.’”<br/>
“That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste—”<br/>
“Gum,” said Holmes.<br/>
“With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word ‘moor’ should have been written?”<br/>
“Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and might be found in any issue, but ‘moor’ would be less common.”<br/>
“Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this message, Mr. Holmes?”<br/>
“There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe is printed in rough characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. ‘Life,’ for example is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption—and from whom?”<br/>
“We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork,” said Dr. Mortimer.<br/>
“Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel.”<br/>
“How in the world can you say that?”<br/>
“If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times leader, we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What’s this?”<br/>
He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes.<br/>
“Well?”<br/>
“Nothing,” said he, throwing it down. “It is a blank half-sheet of paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?”<br/>
“Why, no, Mr. Holmes. I think not.”<br/>
“You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?”<br/>
“I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel,” said our visitor. “Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?”<br/>
“We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?”<br/>
“Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting.”<br/>
“I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting.”<br/>
Sir Henry smiled. “I don’t know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here.”<br/>
“You have lost one of your boots?”<br/>
“My dear sir,” cried Dr. Mortimer, “it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr. Holmes with trifles of this kind?”<br/>
“Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine.”<br/>
“Exactly,” said Holmes, “however foolish the incident may seem. You have lost one of your boots, you say?”<br/>
“Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night, and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on.”<br/>
“If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?”<br/>
“They were tan boots and had never been varnished. That was why I put them out.”<br/>
“Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out at once and bought a pair of boots?”<br/>
“I did a good deal of shopping. Dr. Mortimer here went round with me. You see, if I am to be squire down there, I must dress the part, and it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among other things I bought these brown boots—gave six dollars for them—and had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet.”<br/>
“It seems a singularly useless thing to steal,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I confess that I share Dr. Mortimer’s belief that it will not be long before the missing boot is found.”<br/>
“And, now, gentlemen,” said the baronet with decision, “it seems to me that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time that you kept your promise and gave me a full account of what we are all driving at.”<br/>
“Your request is a very reasonable one,” Holmes answered. “Dr. Mortimer, I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it to us.”<br/>
Thus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before. Sir Henry Baskerville listened with the deepest attention and with an occasional exclamation of surprise.<br/>
“Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance,” said he when the long narrative was finished. “Of course, I’ve heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It’s the pet story of the family, though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my uncle’s death—well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can’t get it clear yet. You don’t seem quite to have made up your mind whether it’s a case for a policeman or a clergyman.”<br/>
“Precisely.”<br/>
“And now there’s this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose that fits into its place.”<br/>
“It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on upon the moor,” said Dr. Mortimer.<br/>
“And also,” said Holmes, “that someone is not ill-disposed towards you, since they warn you of danger.”<br/>
“Or it may be that they wish, for their own purposes, to scare me away.”<br/>
“Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you, Dr. Mortimer, for introducing me to a problem which presents several interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to decide, Sir Henry, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to Baskerville Hall.”<br/>
“Why should I not go?”<br/>
“There seems to be danger.”<br/>
“Do you mean danger from this family friend or do you mean danger from human beings?”<br/>
“Well, that is what we have to find out.”<br/>
“Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer.” His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative. “Meanwhile,” said he, “I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It’s a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr. Holmes, it’s half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and lunch with us at two. I’ll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing strikes me.”<br/>
“Is that convenient to you, Watson?”<br/>
“Perfectly.”<br/>
“Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?”<br/>
“I’d prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather.”<br/>
“I’ll join you in a walk, with pleasure,” said his companion.<br/>
“Then we meet again at two o’clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!”<br/>
We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action.<br/>
“Your hat and boots, Watson, quick! Not a moment to lose!” He rushed into his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds in a frock-coat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the street. Dr. Mortimer and Baskerville were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street.<br/>
“Shall I run on and stop them?”<br/>
“Not for the world, my dear Watson. I am perfectly satisfied with your company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is certainly a very fine morning for a walk.”<br/>
He quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now proceeding slowly onward again.<br/>
“There’s our man, Watson! Come along! We’ll have a good look at him, if we can do no more.”<br/>
At that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab. Instantly the trapdoor at the top flew up, something was screamed to the driver, and the cab flew madly off down Regent Street. Holmes looked eagerly round for another, but no empty one was in sight. Then he dashed in wild pursuit amid the stream of the traffic, but the start was too great, and already the cab was out of sight.<br/>
“There now!” said Holmes bitterly as he emerged panting and white with vexation from the tide of vehicles. “Was ever such bad luck and such bad management, too? Watson, Watson, if you are an honest man you will record this also and set it against my successes!”<br/>
“Who was the man?”<br/>
“I have not an idea.”<br/>
“A spy?”<br/>
“Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Baskerville has been very closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else could it be known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which he had chosen? If they had followed him the first day, I argued that they would follow him also the second. You may have observed that I twice strolled over to the window while Dr. Mortimer was reading his legend.”<br/>
“Yes, I remember.”<br/>
“I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their notice. His method had the additional advantage that if they were to take a cab, he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one obvious disadvantage.”<br/>
“It puts him in the power of the cabman.”<br/>
“Exactly.”<br/>
“What a pity we did not get the number!”<br/>
“My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use to us for the moment.”<br/>
“I fail to see how you could have done more.”<br/>
“On observing the cab, I should have instantly turned and walked in the other direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab and followed the first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have driven to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there. When our unknown had followed Baskerville home, we should have had the opportunity of playing his own game upon himself and seeing where he made for. As it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was taken advantage of with extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent, we have betrayed ourselves and lost our man.”<br/>
We had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this conversation, and Dr. Mortimer, with his companion, had long vanished in front of us.<br/>
“There is no object in our following them,” said Holmes. “The shadow has departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have in our hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man’s face within the cab?”<br/>
“I could swear only to the beard.”<br/>
“And so, could I—from which I gather that in all probability it was a false one. A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features. Come in here, Watson!”<br/>
He turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was warmly greeted by the manager.<br/>
“Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had the good fortune to help you?”<br/>
“No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my life.”<br/>
“My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability during the investigation.”<br/>
“Yes, sir, he is still with us.”<br/>
“Could you ring him up? —thank you! And I should be glad to have change of this five-pound note.”<br/>
A lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons of the manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous detective.<br/>
“Let me have the Hotel Directory,” said Holmes. “Thank you! Now, Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?”<br/>
“Yes, sir.”<br/>
“You will visit each of these in turn.”<br/>
“Yes, sir.”<br/>
“You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings.”<br/>
“Yes, sir.”<br/>
“You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday. You will say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are looking for it. You understand?”<br/>
“Yes, sir.”<br/>
“But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times with some holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It is this page. You could easily recognize it, could you not?”<br/>
“Yes, sir.”<br/>
“In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. Let me have a report by wire at Baker Street before evening. And now, Watson, it only remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the cabman, No. 2704, and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries and fill in the time until we are due at the hotel.”</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Three Broken Threads</h2></a>
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    <p>Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel.<br/>“Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you,” said the clerk. “He asked me to show you up at once when you came.”<br/>“Have you any objection to my looking at your register?” said Holmes.<br/>“Not in the least.”<br/>The book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville. One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs. Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton.<br/>“Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know,” said Holmes to the porter. “A lawyer, is he not, grey-headed, and walks with a limp?”<br/>“No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman, not older than yourself.”<br/>“Surely you are mistaken about his trade?”<br/>“No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us.”<br/>“Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another.”<br/>“She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town.”<br/>“Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have established a most important fact by these questions, Watson,” he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. “We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact.”<br/>“What does it suggest?”<br/>“It suggests—halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?”<br/>As we came round the top of the stairs, we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning.<br/>“Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel,” he cried. “They’ll find they’ve started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can’t find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they’ve got a bit over the mark this time.”<br/>“Still looking for your boot?”<br/>“Yes, sir, and mean to find it.”<br/>“But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?”<br/>“So it was, sir. And now it’s an old black one.”<br/>“What! you don’t mean to say—?”<br/>“That’s just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the world—the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and don’t stand staring!”<br/>An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene.<br/>“No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word of it.”<br/>“Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I’ll see the manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel.”<br/>“It shall be found, sir—I promise you that if you will have a little patience it will be found.”<br/>“Mind it is, for it’s the last thing of mine that I’ll lose in this den of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you’ll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle—”<br/>“I think it’s well worth troubling about.”<br/>“Why, you look very serious over it.”<br/>“How do you explain it?”<br/>“I just don’t attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me.”<br/>“The queerest perhaps—” said Holmes thoughtfully.<br/>“What do you make of it yourself?”<br/>“Well, I don’t profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle’s death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right.”<br/>We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his intentions.<br/>“To go to Baskerville Hall.”<br/>“And when?”<br/>“At the end of the week.”<br/>“On the whole,” said Holmes, “I think that your decision is a wise one. I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil, they might do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?”<br/>Dr. Mortimer started violently. “Followed! By whom?”<br/>“That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full beard?”<br/>“No—or, let me see—why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles’s butler, is a man with a full, black beard.”<br/>“Ha! Where is Barrymore?”<br/>“He is in charge of the Hall.”<br/>“We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility he might be in London.”<br/>“How can you do that?”<br/>“Give me a telegraph form. ‘Is all ready for Sir Henry?’ That will do. Address to Mr. Barrymore, Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the postmaster, Grimpen: ‘Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel.’ That should let us know before evening whether Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not.”<br/>“That’s so,” said Baskerville. “By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this Barrymore, anyhow?”<br/>“He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are as respectable a couple as any in the county.”<br/>“At the same time,” said Baskerville, “it’s clear enough that so long as there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine home and nothing to do.”<br/>“That is true.”<br/>“Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles’s will?” asked Holmes.<br/>“He and his wife had five hundred pounds each.”<br/>“Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?”<br/>“Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his will.”<br/>“That is very interesting.”<br/>“I hope,” said Dr. Mortimer, “that you do not look with suspicious eyes upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a thousand pounds left to me.”<br/>“Indeed! And anyone else?”<br/>“There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry.”<br/>“And how much was the residue?”<br/>“Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds.”<br/>Holmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I had no idea that so gigantic a sum was involved,” said he.<br/>“Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total value of the estate was close on to a million.”<br/>“Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here—you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis! —who would inherit the estate?”<br/>“Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles’s younger brother died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland.”<br/>“Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr. James Desmond?”<br/>“Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him.”<br/>“And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles’s thousands.”<br/>“He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it.”<br/>“And have you made your will, Sir Henry?”<br/>“No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I’ve had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case, I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle’s idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together.”<br/>“Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone.”<br/>“Dr. Mortimer returns with me.”<br/>“But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side.”<br/>“Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?”<br/>“If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor.”<br/>“Whom would you recommend, then?”<br/>Holmes laid his hand upon my arm. “If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I.”<br/>The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily.<br/>“Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson,” said he. “You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through, I’ll never forget it.”<br/>“I would come, with pleasure,” said I. “But I must speak of it with my wife.”<br/>“Of course, but Mrs. Watson will understand, so the matter is as good as settled.”<br/>“The matter will be settled when it is settled.”<br/>“And you will report very carefully to me,” said Holmes, ignoring me. “When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?” then, continuing without affirmation, “Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington.”<br/>We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet.<br/>“My missing boot!” he cried.<br/>“May all our difficulties vanish as easily!” said Sherlock Holmes.<br/>“But it is a very singular thing,” Dr. Mortimer remarked. “I searched this room carefully before lunch.”<br/>“And so, did I,” said Baskerville. “Every inch of it.”<br/>“There was certainly no boot in it then.”<br/>“In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching.”<br/>The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles’s death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought.<br/>Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran:<br/>Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall. BASKERVILLE.<br/>The second:<br/>Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT.<br/>“There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent.”<br/>“We have still the cabman who drove the spy.”<br/>“Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question.”<br/>The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself.<br/>“I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had been inquiring for No. 2704,” said he. “I’ve driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me.”<br/>“I have nothing in the world against you, my good man,” said Holmes. “On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions.”<br/>“Well, I’ve had a good day and no mistake,” said the cabman with a grin. “What was it you wanted to ask, sir?”<br/>“First of all, your name and address, in case I want you again.”<br/>“John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley’s Yard, near Waterloo Station.”<br/>Sherlock Holmes made a note of it.<br/>“Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o’clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street.”<br/>The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. “Why, there’s no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already,” said he. “The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone.”<br/>“My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?”<br/>“Yes, he did.”<br/>“When did he say this?”<br/>“When he left me.”<br/>“Did he say anything more?”<br/>“He mentioned his name.”<br/>Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. “Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?”<br/>“His name,” said the cabman, “was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”<br/>Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman’s reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh.<br/>“A touch, Watson—an undeniable touch!” said he. “I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So, his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?”<br/>“Yes, sir, that was the gentleman’s name.”<br/>“Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred.”<br/>“He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First, we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here.”<br/>“This very door,” said Holmes.<br/>“Well, I couldn’t be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along—”<br/>“I know,” said Holmes.<br/>“Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving, he turned round and he said: ‘It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.’ That’s how I come to know the name.”<br/>“I see. And you saw no more of him?”<br/>“Not after he went into the station.”<br/>“And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”<br/>The cabman scratched his head. “Well, he wasn’t altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I’d put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don’t know as I could say more than that.”<br/>“Colour of his eyes?”<br/>“No, I can’t say that.”<br/>“Nothing more that you can remember?”<br/>“No, sir; nothing.”<br/>“Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There’s another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!”<br/>“Good-night, sir, and thank you!”<br/>John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and a rueful smile.<br/>“Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began,” said he. “The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I’ve been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I’m not easy in my mind about it.”<br/>“About what?”<br/>“About sending you. It’s an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.”<br/>When I told my wife of my adventures that night, I omitted Holmes’s premonition of danger, preferring to hear her laugh about someone pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. She was understanding about my going to Baskerville, as Holmes had predicted. She even said it was convenient, as she had been meaning to visit her friend Molly Hope. She said all this with a look in her eyes that I had not yet learned to dread.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The Return of the Queen is soon!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Baskerville Hall</h2></a>
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    <p>Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed day, my wife had already left, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions and advice.<br/>
“I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions, Watson,” said he; “I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing.”<br/>
“What sort of facts?” I asked.<br/>
“Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles. I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor.”<br/>
“Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore couple?”<br/>
“By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty, we should be giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton, and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions. There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor, and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must be your very special study.”<br/>
“I will do my best.”<br/>
“You have arms, I suppose?”<br/>
“Yes, I thought it as well to take them.”<br/>
“Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.”<br/>
Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform.<br/>
“No, we have no news of any kind,” said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my friend’s questions. “I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice.”<br/>
“You have always kept together, I presume?”<br/>
“Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of Surgeons.”<br/>
“And I went to look at the folk in the park,” said Baskerville.<br/>
“But we had no trouble of any kind.”<br/>
“It was imprudent, all the same,” said Holmes, shaking his head and looking very grave. “I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other boot?”<br/>
“No, sir, it is gone forever.”<br/>
“Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye,” he added as the train began to glide down the platform. “Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted.”<br/>
I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us.<br/>
The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr. Mortimer’s spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features of the Devon scenery.<br/>
“I’ve been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson,” said he; “but I have never seen a place to compare with it.”<br/>
“I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county,” I remarked.<br/>
“It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county,” said Dr. Mortimer. “A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles’s head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?”<br/>
“I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father’s death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I’m as keen as possible to see the moor.”<br/>
“Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor,” said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage window.<br/>
Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and expressive face, I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There was pride, valour, and strength in his thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it.<br/>
The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes, we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills.<br/>
The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart’s-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the grey boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation—sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.<br/>
“Halloa!” cried Dr. Mortimer, “what is this?”<br/>
A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we travelled.<br/>
“What is this, Perkins?” asked Dr. Mortimer.<br/>
Our driver half turned in his seat. “There’s a convict escaped from Princetown, sir. He’s been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but they’ve had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don’t like it, sir, and that’s a fact.”<br/>
“Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give information.”<br/>
“Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn’t like any ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing.”<br/>
“Who is he, then?”<br/>
“It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer.”<br/>
I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him.<br/>
We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.<br/>
“Baskerville Hall,” said he.<br/>
Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars’ heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles’s South African gold.<br/>
Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end.<br/>
“Was it here?” he asked in a low voice.<br/>
“No, no, the yew alley is on the other side.”<br/>
The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.<br/>
“It’s no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this,” said he. “It’s enough to scare any man. I’ll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won’t know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door.”<br/>
The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke.<br/>
“Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!”<br/>
A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags. Two more figures stood on the porch, my wife and Molly Hope.<br/>
“Mary! What on earth are you doing here?”<br/>
“Molly and I decided to be the first to call on Sir Henry Baskerville. Remember I told you that Lord Hope and Sir Charles were friends?” They then introduced themselves to Sir Henry, who welcomed them, having remembered Molly from childhood. He kissed her hand, apparently forgetting that the proper etiquette was to bow over the hand, without actually touching the lips to it. I imagined cursing to come from the bushes.<br/>
I pulled Mary to the side and explained that there was a murderer on the loose. “How is that different from our life in London?” She was far too cheerful. This mystery taught me many things, but I consider the chief lesson to be discovering the trait in many wives to be up to something.<br/>
“You don’t mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?” said Dr. Mortimer, after greeting wife and Miss Hope. “My own wife is expecting me.”<br/>
“Surely you will stay and have some dinner?”<br/>
“No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service.”<br/>
The wheels died away down the drive while those of us left turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak paneling, the stags’ heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp.<br/>
“It’s just as I imagined it,” said Sir Henry. “Is it not the very picture of an old family home? Or at least,” he looked to Molly, “it is similar to what I remember your family home looked like. To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it.” I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him.<br/>
“You will get used to it,” Molly smiled, “History is not solely a solemn thing. Our forebears laughed and did foolish things, just as we do. As for similarities to Hopemoor House, yes it does seem that our ancestors had similar tastes.”<br/>
Barrymore returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features.<br/>
“Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?”<br/>
“Is it ready?”<br/>
“In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff.”<br/>
“What new conditions?”<br/>
“I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household.”<br/>
“Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?”<br/>
“Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir.”<br/>
“But your family have been with us for several generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family connection.”<br/>
I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler’s white face.<br/>
“I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall.”<br/>
“But what do you intend to do?”<br/>
“I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Charles’s generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms.”<br/>
A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. Mary had already settled a room for us in the same wing as Baskerville’s and almost next door to it. Molly’s was next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my mind.<br/>
But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel’s gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two gentlemen and two ladies, all black-clothed, sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one’s voice became hushed and one’s spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. Our conversation, though spoken with quiet voices, did its best to brighten the room. Molly and Sir Henry reminisced, Mary told stories from when she was governess for Molly’s siblings, and I shared some of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes. I was still puzzling over why my wife and Miss Hope were here and I was glad when the meal was over and Sir Henry and I were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette, while the ladies went back to the bedrooms. I wanted to puzzle over the mystery I came here for.<br/>
“My word, it isn’t a very cheerful place,” said Sir Henry. “I suppose Miss Hope was right and that I can make it more cheerful by being cheerful, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don’t wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning.”<br/>
I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half-moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest.<br/>
And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. Mary awoke too. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. The Stapletons of Merripit House</h2></a>
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    <p>The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and grey impression which had been left the last night. As Sir Henry, Miss Molly Hope, my wife and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark paneling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realise that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before.<br/>“I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!” said the baronet. “We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a grey view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more.”<br/>“And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination,” I answered. “Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing in the night?”<br/>“That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream.”<br/>“I heard it as well,” said Molly, looking to Mary who nodded.<br/>“I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a woman.”<br/>“We must ask about this right away.” He rang the bell and asked Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened to his master’s question.<br/>“There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry,” he answered. “One is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her.”<br/>And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Charles, and we had only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man’s death. Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had seen in the cab on Regent Street? The beard might well have been the same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man, but such an impression might easily have been erroneous. How could I settle the point forever? Obviously the first thing to do was to see the Grimpen postmaster and find whether the test telegram had really been placed in Barrymore’s own hands. Be the answer what it might, I should at least have something to report to Sherlock Holmes.<br/>Sir Henry had numerous papers to examine after breakfast, so that the time was propitious for my excursion. Mary and Molly took to explore the grounds. It was a pleasant walk of four miles along the edge of the moor, leading me at last to a small grey hamlet, in which two larger buildings, which proved to be the inn and the house of Dr. Mortimer, stood high above the rest. The postmaster, who was also the village grocer, had a clear recollection of the telegram.<br/>“Certainly, sir,” said he, “I had the telegram delivered to Mr. Barrymore exactly as directed.”<br/>“Who delivered it?”<br/>“My boy here. James, you delivered that telegram to Mr. Barrymore at the Hall last week, did you not?”<br/>“Yes, father, I delivered it.”<br/>“Into his own hands?” I asked.<br/>“Well, he was up in the loft at the time, so that I could not put it into his own hands, but I gave it into Mrs. Barrymore’s hands, and she promised to deliver it at once.”<br/>“Did you see Mr. Barrymore?”<br/>“No, sir; I tell you he was in the loft.”<br/>“If you didn’t see him, how do you know he was in the loft?”<br/>“Well, surely his own wife ought to know where he is,” said the postmaster testily. “Didn’t he get the telegram? If there is any mistake it is for Mr. Barrymore himself to complain.”<br/>It seemed hopeless to pursue the inquiry any farther, but it was clear that in spite of Holmes’s ruse we had no proof that Barrymore had not been in London all the time. Suppose that it were so—suppose that the same man had been the last who had seen Sir Charles alive, and the first to dog the new heir when he returned to England. What then? Was he the agent of others or had he some sinister design of his own? What interest could he have in persecuting the Baskerville family? I thought of the strange warning clipped out of the leading article of the Times. Was that his work or was it possibly the doing of someone who was bent upon counteracting his schemes? The only conceivable motive was that which had been suggested by Sir Henry, that if the family could be scared away a comfortable and permanent home would be secured for the Barrymores. But surely such an explanation as that would be quite inadequate to account for the deep and subtle scheming which seemed to be weaving an invisible net round the young baronet. Holmes himself had said that no more complex case had come to him in all the long series of his sensational investigations. I prayed, as I walked back along the grey, lonely road, that my friend might soon be freed from his preoccupations and able to come down to take this heavy burden of responsibility from my shoulders.<br/>Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running feet behind me and by a voice which called me by name. I turned, expecting to see Dr. Mortimer, but to my surprise it was a stranger who was pursuing me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and lean-jawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a grey suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net in one of his hands.<br/>“You will, I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Watson,” said he as he came panting up to where I stood. “Here on the moor we are homely folk and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard my name from our mutual friend, Mortimer. I am Stapleton, of Merripit House.”<br/>“Your net and box would have told me as much,” said I, “for I knew that Mr. Stapleton was a naturalist. But how did you know me?”<br/>“I have been calling on Mortimer, and he pointed you out to me from the window of his surgery as you passed. As our road lay the same way I thought that I would overtake you and introduce myself. I trust that Sir Henry is none the worse for his journey?”<br/>“He is very well, thank you.”<br/>“We were all rather afraid that after the sad death of Sir Charles the new baronet might refuse to live here. It is asking much of a wealthy man to come down and bury himself in a place of this kind, but I need not tell you that it means a very great deal to the countryside. Sir Henry has, I suppose, no superstitious fears in the matter?”<br/>“I do not think that it is likely.”<br/>“Of course, you know the legend of the fiend dog which haunts the family?”<br/>“I have heard it.”<br/>“It is extraordinary how credulous the peasants are about here! Any number of them are ready to swear that they have seen such a creature upon the moor.” He spoke with a smile, but I seemed to read in his eyes that he took the matter more seriously. “The story took a great hold upon the imagination of Sir Charles, and I have no doubt that it led to his tragic end.”<br/>“But how?”<br/>“His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have had a fatal effect upon his diseased heart. I fancy that he really did see something of the kind upon that last night in the yew alley. I feared that some disaster might occur, for I was very fond of the old man, and I knew that his heart was weak.”<br/>“How did you know that?”<br/>“My friend Mortimer told me.”<br/>“You think, then, that some dog pursued Sir Charles, and that he died of fright in consequence?”<br/>“Have you any better explanation?”<br/>“I have not come to any conclusion.”<br/>“Has Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”<br/>The words took away my breath for an instant but a glance at the placid face and steadfast eyes of my companion showed that no surprise was intended.<br/>“It is useless for us to pretend that we do not know you, Dr. Watson,” said he. “The records of your detective have reached us here, and you could not celebrate him without being known yourself. When Mortimer told me your name, he could not deny your identity. If you are here, then it follows that Mr. Sherlock Holmes is interesting himself in the matter, and I am naturally curious to know what view he may take.”<br/>“I am afraid that I cannot answer that question.”<br/>“May I ask if he is going to honour us with a visit himself?”<br/>“He cannot leave town at present. He has other cases which engage his attention.”<br/>“What a pity! He might throw some light on that which is so dark to us. But as to your own researches, if there is any possible way in which I can be of service to you I trust that you will command me. If I had any indication of the nature of your suspicions or how you propose to investigate the case, I might perhaps even now give you some aid or advice.”<br/>“I assure you that I am simply here upon a visit to my friend, Sir Henry, and that I need no help of any kind.”<br/>“Excellent!” said Stapleton. “You are perfectly right to be wary and discreet. I am justly reproved for what I feel was an unjustifiable intrusion, and I promise you that I will not mention the matter again.”<br/>We had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the road and wound away across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay upon the right which had in bygone days been cut into a granite quarry. The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with ferns and brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a grey plume of smoke.<br/>“A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House,” said he. “Perhaps you will spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister.”<br/>My first thought was that I should be by Sir Henry’s side, as well as my wife’s. But then I remembered the pile of papers and bills with which his study table was littered. It was certain that I could not help with those. And Mary and Molly, while certainly bold women, were not unwise and would not put themselves in danger. Holmes had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I accepted Stapleton’s invitation, and we turned together down the path.<br/>“It is a wonderful place, the moor,” said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. “You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.”<br/>“You know it well, then?”<br/>“I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a newcomer. We came shortly after Sir Charles settled. But my tastes led me to explore every part of the country round, and I should think that there are few men who know it better than I do.”<br/>“Is it hard to know?”<br/>“Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?”<br/>“It would be a rare place for a gallop.”<br/>“You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?”<br/>“Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest.”<br/>Stapleton laughed. “That is the great Grimpen Mire,” said he. “A false step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!”<br/>Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonised, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion’s nerves seemed to be stronger than mine.<br/>“It’s gone!” said he. “The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It’s a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire.”<br/>“And you say you can penetrate it?”<br/>“Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out.”<br/>“But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?”<br/>“Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them.”<br/>“I shall try my luck someday.”<br/>He looked at me with a surprised face. “For God’s sake put such an idea out of your mind,” said he. “Your blood would be upon my head. I assure you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive. It is only by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do it.”<br/>“Halloa!” I cried. “What is that?”<br/>A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression in his face.<br/>“Queer place, the moor!” said he.<br/>“But what is it?”<br/>“The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I’ve heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud.”<br/>I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us.<br/>“You are an educated man. You don’t believe such nonsense as that?” said I. “What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?”<br/>“Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It’s the mud settling, or the water rising, or something.”<br/>“No, no, that was a living voice.”<br/>“Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?”<br/>“No, I never did.”<br/>“It’s a very rare bird—practically extinct—in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns.”<br/>“It’s the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life.”<br/>“Yes, it’s rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside yonder. What do you make of those?”<br/>The whole steep slope was covered with grey circular rings of stone, a score of them at least.<br/>“What are they? Sheep-pens?”<br/>“No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. These are his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even see his hearth and his couch if you have the curiosity to go inside.<br/>“But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?”<br/>“Neolithic man—no date.”<br/>“What did he do?”<br/>“He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Watson. Oh, excuse me an instant! It is surely Cyclopides.”<br/>A small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His grey clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps and, turning round, found a woman near me upon the path. She had come from the direction in which the plume of smoke indicated the position of Merripit House, but the dip of the moor had hid her until she was quite close.<br/>I could not doubt that this was the Miss Stapleton of whom I had been told, since ladies of any sort must be few upon the moor, and I remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. The woman who approached me was certainly that, and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral tinted, with light hair and grey eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England—slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark, eager eyes. She was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path. Her eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace towards me. I had raised my hat and was about to make some explanatory remark when her own words turned all my thoughts into a new channel.<br/>“Go back!” she said. “Go straight back to London, instantly.”<br/>I could only stare at her in stupid surprise. Her eyes blazed at me, and she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot.<br/>“Why should I go back?” I asked.<br/>“I cannot explain.” She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. “But for God’s sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon the moor again.”<br/>“But I have only just come.”<br/>“Man, man!” she cried. “Can you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare’s-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see the beauties of the place.”<br/>Stapleton had abandoned the chase and came back to us breathing hard and flushed with his exertions.<br/>“Halloa, Beryl!” said he, and it seemed to me that the tone of his greeting was not altogether a cordial one.<br/>“Well, Jack, you are very hot.”<br/>“Yes, I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare and seldom found in the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!” He spoke unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the girl to me.<br/>“You have introduced yourselves; I can see.”<br/>“Yes. I was telling Sir Henry that it was rather late for him to see the true beauties of the moor.”<br/>“Why, who do you think this is?”<br/>“I imagine that it must be Sir Henry Baskerville.”<br/>“No, no,” said I. “Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is Dr. Watson.”<br/>A flush of vexation passed over her expressive face. “We have been talking at cross purposes,” said she.<br/>“Why, you had not very much time for talk,” her brother remarked with the same questioning eyes.<br/>“I talked as if Dr. Watson were a resident instead of being merely a visitor,” said she. “It cannot much matter to him whether it is early or late for the orchids. But you will come on, will you not, and see Merripit House?”<br/>A short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy. We were admitted by a strange, wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with the house. Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady. As I looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to live in such a place.<br/>“Queer spot to choose, is it not?” said he as if in answer to my thought. “And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, Beryl?”<br/>“Quite happy,” said she, but there was no ring of conviction in her words.<br/>“I had a school,” said Stapleton. “It was in the north country. The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one’s own character and ideals was very dear to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out in the school and three of the boys died. It never recovered from the blow, and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet, if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys, I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for, with my strong tastes for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my sister is as devoted to Nature as I am. All this, Dr. Watson, has been brought upon your head by your expression as you surveyed the moor out of our window.”<br/>“It certainly did cross my mind that it might be a little dull—less for you, perhaps, than for your sister.”<br/>“No, no, I am never dull,” said she quickly.<br/>“We have books, we have our studies, and we have interesting neighbours. Dr. Mortimer is a most learned man in his own line. Poor Sir Charles was also an admirable companion. We knew him well and miss him more than I can tell. Do you think that I should intrude if I were to call this afternoon and make the acquaintance of Sir Henry?”<br/>“I am sure that he would be delighted.”<br/>“Then perhaps you would mention that I propose to do so. We may in our humble way do something to make things more easy for him until he becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. Will you come upstairs, Dr. Watson, and inspect my collection of Lepidoptera? I think it is the most complete one in the south-west of England. By the time that you have looked through them lunch will be almost ready.”<br/>But I was eager to get back to my charge. The melancholy of the moor, the death of the unfortunate pony, the weird sound which had been associated with the grim legend of the Baskervilles, all these things tinged my thoughts with sadness. Then on the top of these more or less vague impressions there had come the definite and distinct warning of Miss Stapleton, delivered with such intense earnestness that I could not doubt that some grave and deep reason lay behind it. I resisted all pressure to stay for lunch, and I set off at once upon my return journey, taking the grass-grown path by which, we had come.<br/>It seems, however, that there must have been some short cut for those who knew it, for before I had reached the road, I was astounded to see Miss Stapleton sitting upon a rock by the side of the track. Her face was beautifully flushed with her exertions and she held her hand to her side.<br/>“I have run all the way in order to cut you off, Dr. Watson,” said she. “I had not even time to put on my hat. I must not stop, or my brother may miss me. I wanted to say to you how sorry I am about the stupid mistake I made in thinking that you were Sir Henry. Please forget the words I said, which have no application whatever to you.”<br/>“But I can’t forget them, Miss Stapleton,” said I. “I am Sir Henry’s friend, and his welfare is a very close concern of mine. Tell me why it was that you were so eager that Sir Henry should return to London.”<br/>“A woman’s whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say or do.”<br/>“No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Stapleton, for ever since I have been here, I have been conscious of shadows all round me. Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track. Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey your warning to Sir Henry.”<br/>An expression of irresolution passed for an instant over her face, but her eyes had hardened again when she answered me.<br/>“You make too much of it, Dr. Watson,” said she. “My brother and I were very much shocked by the death of Sir Charles. We knew him very intimately, for his favourite walk was over the moor to our house. He was deeply impressed with the curse which hung over the family, and when this tragedy came, I naturally felt that there must be some grounds for the fears which he had expressed. I was distressed therefore when another member of the family came down to live here, and I felt that he should be warned of the danger which he will run. That was all which I intended to convey.<br/>“But what is the danger?”<br/>“You know the story of the hound?”<br/>“I do not believe in such nonsense.”<br/>“But I do. If you have any influence with Sir Henry, take him away from a place which has always been fatal to his family. The world is wide. Why should he wish to live at the place of danger?”<br/>“Because it is the place of danger. That is Sir Henry’s nature. I fear that unless you can give me some more definite information than this it would be impossible to get him to move.”<br/>“I cannot say anything definite, for I do not know anything definite.”<br/>“I would ask you one more question, Miss Stapleton. If you meant no more than this when you first spoke to me, why should you not wish your brother to overhear what you said? There is nothing to which he, or anyone else, could object.”<br/>“My brother is very anxious to have the Hall inhabited, for he thinks it is for the good of the poor folk upon the moor. He would be very angry if he knew that I have said anything which might induce Sir Henry to go away. But I have done my duty now and I will say no more. I must go back, or he will miss me and suspect that I have seen you. Good-bye!” She turned and had disappeared in a few minutes among the scattered boulders, while I, with my soul full of vague fears, pursued my way to Baskerville Hall.</p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. First Report of Dr. Watson</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>From this point onward I will follow the course of events by transcribing my own letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes which lie before me on the table. One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly as written and show my feelings and suspicions of the moment more accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these tragic events, can possibly do.<br/>
Baskerville Hall, October 13th.<br/>
MY DEAR HOLMES,<br/>
My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one’s soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their grey stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy.<br/>
All this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me and will probably be very uninteresting to your severely practical mind. I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun. Let me, therefore, return to the facts concerning Sir Henry Baskerville.<br/>
If you have not had any report within the last few days it is because up to today there was nothing of importance to relate. Then a very surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell you in due course. But, first of all, I must keep you in touch with some of the other factors in the situation. I have three mysteries occupying me here.<br/>
One of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped convict upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that he has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the lonely householders of this district. A fortnight has passed since his flight, during which he has not been seen and nothing has been heard of him. It is surely inconceivable that he could have held out upon the moor during all that time. Of course, so far as his concealment goes there is no difficulty at all. Any one of these stone huts would give him a hiding-place. But there is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and slaughter one of the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone, and the outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence.<br/>
We are four able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments when I have thought of the Stapletons. They live miles from any help. There is one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, the latter not a very strong man. They would be helpless in the hands of a desperate fellow like this Notting Hill criminal if he could once effect an entrance. Both Sir Henry and I were concerned at their situation, and it was suggested that Perkins the groom should go over to sleep there, but Stapleton would not hear of it. This brings us to the second mystery.<br/>
The fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is a dry glitter in his eyes and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an interesting study. I had thought the baronet to be interested in our dear Molly, and he does seem to be torn, although I think it is less indecision and more guilt on behalf of Molly. Perhaps he had long assumed a match between them because of the attachment he had to her in childhood, or perhaps he thinks his behavior towards her during the first few days here abominable now that it is unlikely for an engagement to happen. The mystery in question is Mary. I had thought her to be scheming for an engagement between Sir Baskerville and her friend, but she seems quite happy about his attentions to Miss Stapleton. Indeed, she seems equally happy when Sir Henry pays attention to Molly and when he doesn’t. There is more than that however. I have caught both Mary and Molly, separately and together, to be talking to someone when I find them on their walks about the grounds, but they both swear that no one was there. Mary seems to be in high spirits on these occasions, as if in on some sort of secret joke. Molly on the other hand is always very irritable afterward. But on to the mystery that is my reason for being here.<br/>
Stapleton came over to call upon Baskerville on that first day, and he took Sir Henry and I to show us the spot where the legend of the wicked Hugo is supposed to have had its origin. It was an excursion of some miles across the moor to a place which is so dismal that it might have suggested the story. We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference of the supernatural in the affairs of men. He spoke lightly, but it was evident that he was very much in earnest. Stapleton was guarded in his replies, but it was easy to see that he said less than he might, and that he would not express his whole opinion out of consideration for the feelings of the baronet. He told us of similar cases, where families had suffered from some evil influence, and he left us with the impression that he shared the popular view upon the matter.<br/>
On our way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there that Sir Henry made the acquaintance of Miss Stapleton. From the first moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed that we have not seen something of the brother and sister. They dine here tonight, and there is some talk of our going to them next week. One would imagine that such a match would be very welcome to Stapleton, and yet I have more than once caught a look of the strongest disapprobation in his face when Sir Henry has been paying some attention to his sister. He is much attached to her, no doubt, and would lead a lonely life without her, but it would seem the height of selfishness if he were to stand in the way of her making so brilliant a marriage. Yet I am certain that he does not wish their intimacy to ripen into love, and I have several times observed that he has taken pains to prevent them from being tête-à-tête. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My popularity would soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders to the letter.<br/>
The other day—Thursday, to be more exact—Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Henry’s request to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either side. At the far end is an old tumble-down summer-house. Halfway down is the moor-gate, where the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate with a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your theory of the affair and tried to picture all that had occurred. As the old man stood there, he saw something coming across the moor, something which terrified him so that he lost his wits and ran and ran until he died of sheer horror and exhaustion. There was the long, gloomy tunnel down which he fled. And from what? A sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound, black, silent, and monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter? Did the pale, watchful Barrymore know more than he cared to say? It was all dim and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind it.<br/>
One other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man’s gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in old manorial and communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but there are rumours that he intends to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down. He helps to keep our lives from being monotonous and gives a little comic relief where it is badly needed.<br/>
And now, having brought you up to date in the escaped convict, my incomprehensible wife, the Stapletons, Dr. Mortimer, and Frankland, of Lafter Hall, let me end on that which is most important and tell you more about the Barrymores, and especially about the surprising development of last night.<br/>
First of all, about the test telegram, which you sent from London in order to make sure that Barrymore was really here. I have already explained that the testimony of the postmaster shows that the test was worthless and that we have no proof one way or the other. I told Sir Henry how the matter stood, and he at once, in his downright fashion, had Barrymore up and asked him whether he had received the telegram himself. Barrymore said that he had.<br/>
“Did the boy deliver it into your own hands?” asked Sir Henry.<br/>
Barrymore looked surprised, and considered for a little time.<br/>
“No,” said he, “I was in the box-room at the time, and my wife brought it up to me.”<br/>
“Did you answer it yourself?”<br/>
“No; I told my wife what to answer and she went down to write it.”<br/>
In the evening he recurred to the subject of his own accord.<br/>
“I could not quite understand the object of your questions this morning, Sir Henry,” said he. “I trust that they do not mean that I have done anything to forfeit your confidence?”<br/>
Sir Henry had to assure him that it was not so and pacify him by giving him a considerable part of his old wardrobe, the London outfit having now all arrived.<br/>
Mrs. Barrymore is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a domestic tyrant. I have always felt that there was something singular and questionable in this man’s character, but the adventure of last night brings all my suspicions to a head.<br/>
And yet it may seem a small matter in itself. You are aware that I am not a very sound sleeper, and since I have been on guard in this house my slumbers have been lighter than ever. Last night, about two in the morning, I was aroused by a stealthy step passing my room. I rose, opened my door, and peeped out. A long black shadow was trailing down the corridor. It was thrown by a man who walked softly down the passage with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole appearance.<br/>
I have told you that the corridor is broken by the balcony which runs round the hall, but that it is resumed upon the farther side. I waited until he had passed out of sight and then I followed him. When I came round the balcony, he had reached the end of the farther corridor, and I could see from the glimmer of light through an open door that he had entered one of the rooms. Now, all these rooms are unfurnished and unoccupied so that his expedition became more mysterious than ever. The light shone steadily as if he were standing motionless. I crept down the passage as noiselessly as I could and peeped round the corner of the door.<br/>
Barrymore was crouching at the window with the candle held against the glass. His profile was half turned towards me, and his face seemed to be rigid with expectation as he stared out into the blackness of the moor. For some minutes he stood watching intently. Then he gave a deep groan and with an impatient gesture he put out the light. Instantly I made my way back to my room, and very shortly came the stealthy steps passing once more upon their return journey. Long afterwards when I had fallen into a light sleep, I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, but I could not tell whence the sound came. What it all means I cannot guess, but there is some secret business going on in this house of gloom which sooner or later we shall get to the bottom of. I do not trouble you with my theories, for you asked me to furnish you only with facts. I have had a long talk with Sir Henry this morning, and we have made a plan of campaign founded upon my observations of last night. I will not speak about it just now, but it should make my next report interesting reading.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Who do you think Mary and Molly are talking to?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. The Light upon the Moor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baskerville Hall, Oct. 15th.<br/>MY DEAR HOLMES,<br/>If I was compelled to leave you without much news during the early days of my mission you must acknowledge that I am making up for lost time, and that events are now crowding thick and fast upon us. In my last report I ended upon my top note with Barrymore at the window, and now I have quite a budget already which will, unless I am much mistaken, considerably surprise you. Things have taken a turn which I could not have anticipated. In some ways they have within the last forty-eight hours become much clearer and, in some ways, they have become more complicated. But I will tell you all and you shall judge for yourself.<br/>Before breakfast on the morning following my adventure, I went down the corridor and examined the room in which Barrymore had been on the night before. The western window through which he had stared so intently has, I noticed, one peculiarity above all other windows in the house—it commands the nearest outlook on to the moor. There is an opening between two trees which enables one from this point of view to look right down upon it, while from all the other windows it is only a distant glimpse which can be obtained. It follows, therefore, that Barrymore, since only this window would serve the purpose, must have been looking out for something or somebody upon the moor. The night was very dark, so that I can hardly imagine how he could have hoped to see anyone. It had struck me that it was possible that some love intrigue was on foot. That would have accounted for his stealthy movements and also for the uneasiness of his wife. The man is a striking-looking fellow, very well equipped to steal the heart of a country girl, so that this theory seemed to have something to support it. That opening of the door which I had heard after I had returned to my room might mean that he had gone out to keep some clandestine appointment. So, I reasoned with myself in the morning, and I tell you the direction of my suspicions, however much the result may have shown that they were unfounded.<br/>But whatever the true explanation of Barrymore’s movements might be, I felt that the responsibility of keeping them to myself until I could explain them was more than I could bear. I had an interview with the baronet in his study after breakfast, and I told him all that I had seen. He was less surprised than I had expected.<br/>“I knew that Barrymore walked about nights, and I had a mind to speak to him about it,” said he. “Two or three times I have heard his steps in the passage, coming and going, just about the hour you name.”<br/>“Perhaps then he pays a visit every night to that particular window,” I suggested.<br/>“Perhaps he does. If so, we should be able to shadow him and see what it is that he is after. I wonder what your friend Holmes would do if he were here.”<br/>“I believe that he would do exactly what you now suggest,” said I. “He would follow Barrymore and see what he did.”<br/>“Then we shall do it together.”<br/>“But surely he would hear us.”<br/>“The man is rather deaf, and in any case, we must take our chance of that. We’ll sit up in my room tonight and wait until he passes.” Sir Henry rubbed his hands with pleasure, and it was evident that he hailed the adventure as a relief to his somewhat quiet life upon the moor.<br/>The baronet has been in communication with the architect who prepared the plans for Sir Charles, and with a contractor from London, so that we may expect great changes to begin here soon. There have been decorators and furnishers up from Plymouth, and it is evident that our friend has large ideas and means to spare no pains or expense to restore the grandeur of his family. When the house is renovated and refurnished, all that he will need will be a wife to make it complete. Between ourselves there are pretty clear signs that this will not be wanting if the lady is willing, for I have seldom seen a man more infatuated with a woman than he is with our beautiful neighbour, Miss Stapleton. And yet the course of true love does not run quite as smoothly as one would under the circumstances expect. Today, for example, its surface was broken by a very unexpected ripple, which has caused our friend considerable perplexity and annoyance.<br/>After the conversation which I have quoted about Barrymore, Sir Henry put on his hat and prepared to go out. As a matter of course I did the same.<br/>“What, are you coming, Watson?” he asked, looking at me in a curious way.<br/>“That depends on whether you are going on the moor,” said I.<br/>“Yes, I am.”<br/>“Well, you know what my instructions are. I am sorry to intrude, but you heard how earnestly Holmes insisted that I should not leave you, and especially that you should not go alone upon the moor.”<br/>Sir Henry put his hand upon my shoulder with a pleasant smile.<br/>“My dear fellow,” said he, “Holmes, with all his wisdom, did not foresee some things which have happened since I have been on the moor. You understand me? I am sure that you are the last man in the world who would wish to be a spoil-sport. I must go out alone.”<br/>It put me in a most awkward position. I was at a loss what to say or what to do, and before I had made up my mind, he picked up his cane and was gone.<br/>But when I came to think the matter over my conscience reproached me bitterly for having on any pretext allowed him to go out of my sight. I imagined what my feelings would be if I had to return to you and to confess that some misfortune had occurred through my disregard for your instructions. I assure you my cheeks flushed at the very thought. It might not even now be too late to overtake him, so I set off at once in the direction of Merripit House.<br/>I hurried along the road at the top of my speed without seeing anything of Sir Henry, until I came to the point where the moor path branches off. There, fearing that perhaps I had come in the wrong direction after all, I mounted a hill from which I could command a view—the same hill which is cut into the dark quarry. Thence I saw him at once. He was on the moor path about a quarter of a mile off, and a lady was by his side who could only be Miss Stapleton. It was clear that there was already an understanding between them and that they had met by appointment. They were walking slowly along in deep conversation, and I saw her making quick little movements of her hands as if she were very earnest in what she was saying, while he listened intently, and once or twice shook his head in strong dissent. I stood among the rocks watching them, very much puzzled as to what I should do next. To follow them and break into their intimate conversation seemed to be an outrage, and yet my clear duty was never for an instant to let him out of my sight. To act the spy upon a friend was a hateful task. Still, I could see no better course than to observe him from the hill, and to clear my conscience by confessing to him afterwards what I had done. It is true that if any sudden danger had threatened him, I was too far away to be of use, and yet I am sure that you will agree with me that the position was very difficult, and that there was nothing more which I could do.<br/>Our friend, Sir Henry, and the lady had halted on the path and were standing deeply absorbed in their conversation, when I was suddenly aware that I was not the only witness of their interview. A wisp of green floating in the air caught my eye, and another glance showed me that it was carried on a stick by a man who was moving among the broken ground. It was Stapleton with his butterfly-net. He was very much closer to the pair than I was, and he appeared to be moving in their direction. At this instant Sir Henry suddenly drew Miss Stapleton to his side. His arm was round her, but it seemed to me that she was straining away from him with her face averted. He stooped his head to hers, and she raised one hand as if in protest. Next moment I saw them spring apart and turn hurriedly round. Stapleton was the cause of the interruption. He was running wildly towards them, his absurd net dangling behind him. He gesticulated and almost danced with excitement in front of the lovers. What the scene meant I could not imagine, but it seemed to me that Stapleton was abusing Sir Henry, who offered explanations, which became more angry as the other refused to accept them. The lady stood by in haughty silence. Finally, Stapleton turned upon his heel and beckoned in a peremptory way to his sister, who, after an irresolute glance at Sir Henry, walked off by the side of her brother. The naturalist’s angry gestures showed that the lady was included in his displeasure. The baronet stood for a minute looking after them, and then he walked slowly back the way that he had come, his head hanging, the very picture of dejection.<br/>What all this meant I could not imagine, but I was deeply ashamed to have witnessed so intimate a scene without my friend’s knowledge. I ran down the hill therefore and met the baronet at the bottom. His face was flushed with anger and his brows were wrinkled, like one who is at his wit’s ends what to do.<br/>“Halloa, Watson! Where have you dropped from?” said he. “You don’t mean to say that you came after me in spite of all?”<br/>I explained everything to him: how I had found it impossible to remain behind, how I had followed him, and how I had witnessed all that had occurred. For an instant his eyes blazed at me, but my frankness disarmed his anger, and he broke at last into a rather rueful laugh.<br/>“You would have thought the middle of that prairie a fairly safe place for a man to be private,” said he, “but, by thunder, the whole countryside seems to have been out to see me do my wooing—and a mighty poor wooing at that! Where had you engaged a seat?”<br/>“I was on that hill.”<br/>“Quite in the back row, eh? But her brother was well up to the front. Did you see him come out on us?”<br/>“Yes, I did.”<br/>“Did he ever strike you as being crazy—this brother of hers?”<br/>“I can’t say that he ever did.”<br/>“I dare say not. I always thought him sane enough until today, but you can take it from me that either he or I ought to be in a straitjacket. What’s the matter with me, anyhow? You’ve lived near me for some weeks, Watson. Tell me straight, now! Is there anything that would prevent me from making a good husband to a woman that I loved?”<br/>“I should say not.”<br/>“He can’t object to my worldly position, so it must be myself that he has this down on. What has he against me? I never hurt man or woman in my life that I know of. And yet he would not so much as let me touch the tips of her fingers.”<br/>“Did he say so?”<br/>“That, and a deal more. I tell you, Watson, I’ve only known her these few weeks, but from the first I just felt that she was made for me, and she, too—she was happy when she was with me, and that I’ll swear. There’s a light in a woman’s eyes that speaks louder than words. But he has never let us get together and it was only today for the first time that I saw a chance of having a few words with her alone. She was glad to meet me, but when she did it was not love that she would talk about, and she wouldn’t have let me talk about it either if she could have stopped it. She kept coming back to it that this was a place of danger, and that she would never be happy until I had left it. I told her that since I had seen her, I was in no hurry to leave it, and that if she really wanted me to go, the only way to work it was for her to arrange to go with me. With that I offered in as many words to marry her, but before she could answer, down came this brother of hers, running at us with a face on him like a madman. He was just white with rage, and those light eyes of his were blazing with fury. What was I doing with the lady? How dared I offer her attentions which were distasteful to her? Did I think that because I was a baronet, I could do what I liked? If he had not been her brother, I should have known better how to answer him. As it was, I told him that my feelings towards his sister were such as I was not ashamed of, and that I hoped that she might honour me by becoming my wife. That seemed to make the matter no better, so then I lost my temper too, and I answered him rather more hotly than I should perhaps, considering that she was standing by. So, it ended by his going off with her, as you saw, and here am I as badly puzzled a man as any in this county. Just tell me what it all means, Watson, and I’ll owe you more than ever I can hope to pay.”<br/>I tried one or two explanations, but, indeed, I was completely puzzled myself. Our friend’s title, his fortune, his age, his character, and his appearance are all in his favour, and I know nothing against him unless it be this dark fate which runs in his family. That his advances should be rejected so brusquely without any reference to the lady’s own wishes and that the lady should accept the situation without protest is very amazing. However, our conjectures were set at rest by a visit from Stapleton himself that very afternoon. He had come to offer apologies for his rudeness of the morning, and after a long private interview with Sir Henry in his study the upshot of their conversation was that the breach is quite healed, and that we are to dine at Merripit House next Friday as a sign of it.<br/>“I don’t say now that he isn’t a crazy man,” said Sir Henry; “I can’t forget the look in his eyes when he ran at me this morning, but I must allow that no man could make a more handsome apology than he has done.”<br/>“Did he give any explanation of his conduct?”<br/>“His sister is everything in his life, he says. That is natural enough, and I am glad that he should understand her value. They have always been together, and according to his account he has been a very lonely man with only her as a companion, so that the thought of losing her was really terrible to him. He had not understood, he said, that I was becoming attached to her, but when he saw with his own eyes that it was really so, and that she might be taken away from him, it gave him such a shock that for a time he was not responsible for what he said or did. He was very sorry for all that had passed, and he recognized how foolish and how selfish it was that he should imagine that he could hold a beautiful woman like his sister to himself for her whole life. If she had to leave him, he had rather it was to a neighbour like myself than to anyone else. But in any case, it was a blow to him and it would take him some time before he could prepare himself to meet it. He would withdraw all opposition upon his part if I would promise for three months to let the matter rest and to be content with cultivating the lady’s friendship during that time without claiming her love. This I promised, and so the matter rests.”<br/>So, there is one of the many small mysteries cleared up. It is something to have touched bottom anywhere in this bog in which we are floundering. We know now why Stapleton looked with disfavour upon his sister’s suitor—even when that suitor was so eligible a one as Sir Henry. And now I pass on to another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein, the mystery of the sobs in the night, of the tear-stained face of Mrs. Barrymore, of the secret journey of the butler to the western lattice window. Congratulate me, my dear Holmes, and tell me that I have not disappointed you as an agent—that you do not regret the confidence which you showed in me when you sent me down. All these things have by one night’s work been thoroughly cleared.<br/>I have said “by one night’s work,” but, in truth, it was by two nights’ work, for on the first we drew entirely blank. I sat up with Sir Henry in his rooms until nearly three o’clock in the morning, but no sound of any sort did we hear except the chiming clock upon the stairs. It was a most melancholy vigil and ended by each of us falling asleep in our chairs. Fortunately, we were not discouraged, and we determined to try again. It was quite the argument to convince Mary and Molly that they could not help us, but the next night Sir Henry and I lowered the lamp and sat smoking cigarettes without making the least sound, while the ladies were safe in their rooms. It was incredible how slowly the hours crawled by, and yet we were helped through it by the same sort of patient interest which the hunter must feel as he watches the trap into which he hopes the game may wander. One struck, and two, and we had almost for the second time given it up in despair when in an instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs with all our weary senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of a step in the passage.<br/>Very stealthily we heard it pass along until it died away in the distance. Then the baronet gently opened his door and we set out in pursuit. Already our man had gone round the gallery and the corridor was all in darkness. Softly we stole along until we had come into the other wing. We were just in time to catch a glimpse of the tall, black-bearded figure, his shoulders rounded as he tiptoed down the passage. Then he passed through the same door as before, and the light of the candle framed it in the darkness and shot one single yellow beam across the gloom of the corridor. We shuffled cautiously towards it, trying every plank before we dared to put our whole weight upon it. We had taken the precaution of leaving our boots behind us, but, even so, the old boards snapped and creaked beneath our tread. Sometimes it seemed impossible that he should fail to hear our approach. However, the man is fortunately rather deaf, and he was entirely preoccupied in that which he was doing. When at last we reached the door and peeped through we found him crouching at the window, candle in hand, his white, intent face pressed against the pane, exactly as I had seen him two nights before.<br/>We had arranged no plan of campaign, but the baronet is a man to whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked into the room, and as he did so Barrymore sprang up from the window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he gazed from Sir Henry to me.<br/>“What are you doing here, Barrymore?”<br/>“Nothing, sir.” His agitation was so great that he could hardly speak, and the shadows sprang up and down from the shaking of his candle. “It was the window, sir. I go round at night to see that they are fastened.”<br/>“On the second floor?”<br/>“Yes, sir, all the windows.”<br/>“Look here, Barrymore,” said Sir Henry sternly, “we have made up our minds to have the truth out of you, so it will save you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?”<br/>The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery.<br/>“I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window.”<br/>“And why were you holding a candle to the window?”<br/>“Don’t ask me, Sir Henry—don’t ask me! I give you my word, sir, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you.”<br/>A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the trembling hand of the butler.<br/>“He must have been holding it as a signal,” said I. “Let us see if there is any answer.” I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation, for a tiny pinpoint of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the dark veil, and glowed steadily in the centre of the black square framed by the window.<br/>“There it is!” I cried.<br/>“No, no, sir, it is nothing—nothing at all!” the butler broke in; “I assure you, sir—”<br/>“Move your light across the window, Watson!” cried the baronet. “See, the other moves also! Now, you rascal, do you deny that it is a signal? Come, speak up! Who is your confederate out yonder, and what is this conspiracy that is going on?”<br/>The man’s face became openly defiant. “It is my business, and not yours. I will not tell.”<br/>“Then you leave my employment right away.”<br/>“Very good, sir. If I must I must.”<br/>“And you go in disgrace. By thunder, you may well be ashamed of yourself. Your family has lived with mine for over a hundred years under this roof, and here I find you deep in some dark plot against me.”<br/>“No, no, sir; no, not against you!” It was a woman’s voice, and Mrs. Barrymore, paler and more horror-struck than her husband, was standing at the door. Her bulky figure in a shawl and skirt might have been comic were it not for the intensity of feeling upon her face.<br/>“We have to go, Eliza. This is the end of it. You can pack our things,” said the butler.<br/>“Oh, John, John, have I brought you to this? It is my doing, Sir Henry—all mine. He has done nothing except for my sake and because I asked him.”<br/>“Speak out, then! What does it mean?”<br/>“My unhappy brother is starving on the moor. We cannot let him perish at our very gates. The light is a signal to him that food is ready for him, and his light out yonder is to show the spot to which to bring it.”<br/>“Then your brother is—”<br/>“The escaped convict, sir—Selden, the criminal.”<br/>“That’s the truth, sir,” said Barrymore. “I said that it was not my secret and that I could not tell it to you. But now you have heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not against you.”<br/>This, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at night and the light at the window. Sir Henry and I both stared at the woman in amazement. Was it possible that this stolidly respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most notorious criminals in the country?<br/>“Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as he grew older, he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother’s heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold; but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with as an elder sister would. That was why he broke prison, sir. He knew that I was here and that we could not refuse to help him. When he dragged himself here one night, weary and starving, with the warders hard at his heels, what could we do? We took him in and fed him and cared for him. Then the ladies arrived and you returned, sir, and my brother thought he would be safer on the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so he lay in hiding there. But every second night we made sure if he was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there was an answer my husband took out some bread and meat to him. Every day we hoped that he was gone, but as long as he was there, we could not desert him. That is the whole truth, as I am an honest Christian woman and you will see that if there is blame in the matter it does not lie with my husband but with me, for whose sake he has done all that he has.”<br/>The woman’s words came with an intense earnestness which carried conviction with them.<br/>“Is this true, Barrymore?”<br/>“Yes, Sir Henry. Every word of it.”<br/>“Well, I cannot blame you for standing by your own wife. Forget what I have said. Go to your room, you two, and we shall talk further about this matter in the morning.”<br/>When they were gone, we looked out of the window again. Sir Henry had flung it open, and the cold night wind beat in upon our faces. Far away in the black distance there still glowed that one tiny point of yellow light.<br/>“I wonder he dares,” said Sir Henry.<br/>“It may be so placed as to be only visible from here.”<br/>“Very likely. How far do you think it is?”<br/>“Out by the Cleft Tor, I think.”<br/>“Not more than a mile or two off.”<br/>“Hardly that.”<br/>“Well, it cannot be far if Barrymore had to carry out the food to it. And he is waiting, this villain, beside that candle. By thunder, Watson, I am going out to take that man!”<br/>The same thought had crossed my own mind. It was not as if the Barrymores had taken us into their confidence. Their secret had been forced from them. The man was a danger to the community, an unmitigated scoundrel for whom there was neither pity nor excuse. We were only doing our duty in taking this chance of putting him back where he could do no harm. With his brutal and violent nature, others would have to pay the price if we held our hands. Any night, for example, our neighbours the Stapletons might be attacked by him, and it may have been the thought of this which made Sir Henry so keen upon the adventure. I myself was unnerved at the thought of such a criminal near my wife. Mary and Molly had never wandered far without an escort, but the man could have attacked them on their walks about the grounds since the Barrymores let him in.<br/>“I will come,” said I.<br/>“Then get your revolver and put on your boots. The sooner we start the better, as the fellow may put out his light and be off.”<br/>In five minutes, we were outside the door, starting upon our expedition. We hurried through the dark shrubbery, amid the dull moaning of the autumn wind and the rustle of the falling leaves. The night air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay. Now and again the moon peeped out for an instant, but clouds were driving over the face of the sky, and just as we came out on the moor a thin rain began to fall. The light still burned steadily in front.<br/>“Are you armed?” I asked.<br/>“I have a hunting-crop.”<br/>“We must close in on him rapidly, for he is said to be a desperate fellow. We shall take him by surprise and have him at our mercy before he can resist.”<br/>“I say, Watson,” said the baronet, “what would Holmes say to this? How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil is exalted?”<br/>As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again, and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness.<br/>“My God, what’s that, Watson?”<br/>“I don’t know. It’s a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before.”<br/>It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came.<br/>“Watson,” said the baronet, “it was the cry of a hound.”<br/>My blood ran cold in my veins, for there was a break in his voice which told of the sudden horror which had seized him.<br/>“What do they call this sound?” he asked.<br/>“Who?”<br/>“The folk on the countryside.”<br/>“Oh, they are ignorant people. Why should you mind what they call it?”<br/>“Tell me, Watson. What do they say of it?”<br/>I hesitated but could not escape the question.<br/>“They say it is the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles.”<br/>He groaned and was silent for a few moments.<br/>“A hound it was,” he said at last, “but it seemed to come from miles away, over yonder, I think.”<br/>“It was hard to say whence it came.”<br/>“It rose and fell with the wind. Isn’t that the direction of the great Grimpen Mire?”<br/>“Yes, it is.”<br/>“Well, it was up there. Come now, Watson, didn’t you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I am not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth.”<br/>“Stapleton was with me when I heard it last. He said that it might be the calling of a strange bird.”<br/>“No, no, it was a hound. My God, can there be some truth in all these stories? Is it possible that I am really in danger from so dark a cause? You don’t believe it, do you, Watson?”<br/>“No, no.”<br/>“And yet it was one thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don’t think that I am a coward, Watson, but that sound seemed to freeze my very blood. Feel my hand!”<br/>It was as cold as a block of marble.<br/>“You’ll be all right tomorrow.”<br/>“I don’t think I’ll get that cry out of my head. What do you advise that we do now?”<br/>“Shall we turn back?”<br/>“No, by thunder; we have come out to get our man, and we will do it. We after the convict, and a hell-hound, as likely as not, after us. Come on! We’ll see it through if all the fiends of the pit were loose upon the moor.”<br/>We stumbled slowly along in the darkness, with the black loom of the craggy hills around us, and the yellow speck of light burning steadily in front. There is nothing so deceptive as the distance of a light upon a pitch-dark night, and sometimes the glimmer seemed to be far away upon the horizon and sometimes it might have been within a few yards of us. But at last we could see whence it came, and then we knew that we were indeed very close. A guttering candle was stuck in a crevice of the rocks which flanked it on each side so as to keep the wind from it and also to prevent it from being visible, save in the direction of Baskerville Hall. A boulder of granite concealed our approach, and crouching behind it we gazed over it at the signal light. It was strange to see this single candle burning there in the middle of the moor, with no sign of life near it—just the one straight yellow flame and the gleam of the rock on each side of it.<br/>“What shall we do now?” whispered Sir Henry.<br/>“Wait here. He must be near his light. Let us see if we can get a glimpse of him.”<br/>The words were hardly out of my mouth when we both saw him. Over the rocks, in the crevice of which the candle burned, there was thrust out an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides. The light beneath him was reflected in his small, cunning eyes which peered fiercely to right and left through the darkness like a crafty and savage animal who has heard the steps of the hunters.<br/>Something had evidently aroused his suspicions. It may have been that Barrymore had some private signal which we had neglected to give, or the fellow may have had some other reason for thinking that all was not well, but I could read his fears upon his wicked face. Any instant he might dash out the light and vanish in the darkness. I sprang forward therefore, and Sir Henry did the same. At the same moment the convict screamed out a curse at us and hurled a rock which splintered up against the boulder which had sheltered us. I caught one glimpse of his short, squat, strongly built figure as he sprang to his feet and turned to run. At the same moment by a lucky chance the moon broke through the clouds. We rushed over the brow of the hill, and there was our man running with great speed down the other side, springing over the stones in his way with the activity of a mountain goat. A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away.<br/>We were both swift runners and in fairly good training, but we soon found that we had no chance of overtaking him. We saw him for a long time in the moonlight until he was only a small speck moving swiftly among the boulders upon the side of a distant hill. We ran and ran until we were completely blown, but the space between us grew ever wider. Finally, we stopped and sat panting on two rocks, while we watched him disappearing in the distance.<br/>And it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor. Do not think that it was a delusion, Holmes. I assure you that I have never in my life seen anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place. It was not the convict. This man was far from the place where the latter had disappeared. Besides, he was a much taller man. With a cry of surprise, I pointed him out to the baronet, but in the instant during which I had turned to grasp his arm the man was gone. There was the sharp pinnacle of granite still cutting the lower edge of the moon, but its peak bore no trace of that silent and motionless figure.<br/>I wished to go in that direction and to search the tor, but it was some distance away. The baronet’s nerves were still quivering from that cry, which recalled the dark story of his family, and he was not in the mood for fresh adventures. He had not seen this lonely man upon the tor and could not feel the thrill which his strange presence and his commanding attitude had given to me. “A warder, no doubt,” said he. “The moor has been thick with them since this fellow escaped.” Well, perhaps his explanation may be the right one, but I should like to have some further proof of it. Today we mean to communicate to the Princetown people where they should look for their missing man, but it is hard lines that we have not actually had the triumph of bringing him back as our own prisoner. Such are the adventures of last night, and you must acknowledge, my dear Holmes, that I have done you very well in the matter of a report. Much of what I tell you is no doubt quite irrelevant, but still I feel that it is best that I should let you have all the facts and leave you to select for yourself those which will be of most service to you in helping you to your conclusions. We are certainly making some progress. So far as the Barrymores go we have found the motive of their actions, and that has cleared up the situation very much. But the moor with its mysteries and its strange inhabitants remains as inscrutable as ever. Perhaps in my next I may be able to throw some light upon this also. Best of all would it be if you could come down to us. In any case you will hear from me again in the course of the next few days.</p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. The Man on the Tor</h2></a>
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    <p>So far, I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded during these early days to Sherlock Holmes. Now, however, I have arrived at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method and to trust once more to my recollections. I proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the convict and our other strange experiences upon the moor.<br/>It was a dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house was banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon their wet faces. It was melancholy outside and in. The baronet was in a black reaction after the excitements of the night. I was conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger—ever present danger, which is the more terrible because I was unable to define it.<br/>And had I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which all pointed to some sinister influence at work around us. There was the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there were the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor. Twice I had with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It was incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Stapleton may have fallen in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes. Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts are facts, and I had twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose that there was really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend as easily as of an enemy. Where was that friend or enemy now? Had he remained in London, or had he followed us down here? Could he—could he be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor?<br/>It is true that I had only the one glance at him, and yet there are some things to which I am ready to swear. He was no one whom I have seen down here, and I had now met all the neighbours. The figure was far taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that of Frankland. Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us, and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then was still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We had never shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one purpose I now devoted all my energies.<br/>My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and wisest one was to play my own game and speak as little as possible to anyone. He was silent and distrait. His nerves had been strangely shaken by that sound upon the moor. I would say nothing to add to his anxieties, but I would take my own steps to attain my own end.<br/>We had a small scene that morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study some little time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was under discussion. After a time, the baronet opened his door and called for me. “Barrymore considers that he has a grievance,” he said. “He thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret.”<br/>The butler was standing very pale but very collected before us.<br/>“I may have spoken too warmly, sir,” said he, “and if I have, I am sure that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much surprised when I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and learned that you had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough to fight against without my putting more upon his track.”<br/>“If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a different thing,” said the baronet, “you only told us, or rather your wife only told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help yourself.”<br/>“I didn’t think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir Henry—indeed I didn’t.”<br/>“The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over the moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only want to get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr. Stapleton’s house, for example, with no one but himself to defend it. There’s no safety for anyone until he is under lock and key.”<br/>“He’ll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that. But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you, Sir Henry, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will have been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God’s sake, sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still on the moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet until the ship is ready for him. You can’t tell on him without getting my wife and me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing to the police.”<br/>“What do you say, Watson?”<br/>I contemplated. “If he were safely out of the country it would relieve the tax-payer of a burden.”<br/>“But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?”<br/>“He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was hiding.”<br/>“That is true,” said Sir Henry. “Well, Barrymore—”<br/>“God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have killed my poor wife had he been taken again.”<br/>“I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what we have heard I don’t feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end of it. All right, Barrymore, you can go.”<br/>With a few broken words of gratitude, the man turned, but he hesitated and then came back.<br/>“You’ve been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I’ve never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It’s about poor Sir Charles’s death.”<br/>The baronet and I were both upon our feet. “Do you know how he died?”<br/>“No, sir, I don’t know that.”<br/>“What then?”<br/>“I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman.”<br/>“To meet a woman! He?”<br/>“Yes, sir.”<br/>“And the woman’s name?”<br/>“I can’t give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L.”<br/>“How do you know this, Barrymore?”<br/>“Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman’s hand.”<br/>“Well?”<br/>“Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Charles’s study—it had never been touched since his death—and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was grey on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter and it said: ‘Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L.”<br/>“Have you got that slip?”<br/>“No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it.”<br/>“Had Sir Charles received any other letters in the same writing?”<br/>“Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone.”<br/>“And you have no idea who L. L. is?”<br/>“No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady, we should know more about Sir Charles’s death.”<br/>“I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information.”<br/>“Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn’t help our poor master, and it’s well to go carefully when there’s a lady in the case. Even the best of us—”<br/>“You thought it might injure his reputation?”<br/>“Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter.”<br/>“Very good, Barrymore; you can go.” When the butler had left us Sir Henry turned to me. “Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?”<br/>“It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.”<br/>“So, I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?”<br/>“Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him down.”<br/>I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning’s conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that he had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wished that he were here.<br/>All day the next day the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. And then I thought of that other one—the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluged—the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in grey wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before.<br/>As I walked back, I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in his dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he gave me a lift homeward. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again.<br/>“By the way, Mortimer,” said I as we jolted along the rough road, “I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?”<br/>“Hardly any, I think.”<br/>“Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L. L.?”<br/>He thought for a few minutes.<br/>“No,” said he. “There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can’t answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit though,” he added after a pause. “There is Laura Lyons—her initials are L. L.—but she lives in Coombe Tracey.”<br/>“Who is she?” I asked.<br/>“She is Frankland’s daughter.”<br/>“What! Old Frankland the crank?”<br/>“Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time.”<br/>“How does she live?”<br/>“I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting business.”<br/>He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there was no reason to take anyone into our confidence. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent, I asked him casually to what type Frankland’s skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.<br/>I have only one other incident to record about that tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore, which gave me one more strong card which I can play in due time.<br/>Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played écarté afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to ask him a few questions.<br/>“Well,” said I, “has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?”<br/>“I don’t know, sir. I hope to heaven that he has gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I’ve not heard of him since I left out food for him last, and that was three days ago.”<br/>“Did you see him then?”<br/>“No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that way.”<br/>“Then he was certainly there?”<br/>“So, you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it.”<br/>I sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at Barrymore.<br/>“You know that there is another man then?”<br/>“Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor.”<br/>“Have you seen him?”<br/>“No, sir.”<br/>“How do you know of him then?”<br/>“Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He’s in hiding, too, but he’s not a convict as far as I can make out. I don’t like it, Dr. Watson—I tell you straight, sir, that I don’t like it.” He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness.<br/>“Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don’t like.”<br/>Barrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words.<br/>“It’s all these goings-on, sir,” he cried at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. “There’s foul play somewhere, and there’s black villainy brewing, to that I’ll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London again!”<br/>“But what is it that alarms you?”<br/>“Look at Sir Charles’s death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There’s not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What’s he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Henry’s new servants are ready to take over the Hall.”<br/>“But about this stranger,” said I. “Can you tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was doing?”<br/>“He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away. At first, he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was doing he could not make out.”<br/>“And where did he say that he lived?”<br/>“Among the old houses on the hillside—the stone huts where the old folk used to live.”<br/>“But how about his food?”<br/>“Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants.”<br/>“Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time.” When the butler had gone, I walked over to the black window, and I looked through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and earnest purpose could he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which vexed me so sorely. I swore that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the mystery. If only I had known then how simple it could have been to discover that man’s identity. If only I had known then that my conversation with Barrymore had been overheard.<br/>My narrative has now been brought up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places.<br/>I had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs. Lyons upon the evening before, for Dr. Mortimer remained with him at cards until it was very late, but I did tell my wife of my discovery and plans. At breakfast, she and Molly ate quickly so that they could have an early morning walk. However, I informed Sir Henry about my discovery and asked him whether he would care to accompany me to Coombe Tracey. At first, he was very eager to come, but on second thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we might obtain. I left Sir Henry behind, therefore, not without some prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest. I took Sir Henry’s hunting-crop with me, as I could not find my revolver anywhere.<br/>When I reached Coombe Tracey, I told Perkins to put up the horses, and I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed. A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter, sprang up with a pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my visit.<br/>The first impression left by Mrs. Lyons was one of extreme beauty. Her eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the sulphur rose. But the second impression was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty.<br/>“I have the pleasure,” said I, “of knowing your father.”<br/>It was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it. “There is nothing in common between my father and me,” she said. “I owe him nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts, I might have starved for all that my father cared.”<br/>“It was about the late Sir Charles Baskerville that I have come here to see you.”<br/>The freckles started out on the lady’s face.<br/>“What can I tell you about him?” she asked, and her fingers played nervously over the stops of her typewriter.<br/>“You knew him, did you not?”<br/>“I have already said that I owe a great deal to his kindness. If I am able to support myself it is largely due to the interest which he took in my unhappy situation.”<br/>“Did you correspond with him?”<br/>The lady looked quickly up with an angry gleam in her hazel eyes.<br/>“What is the object of these questions?” she asked sharply.<br/>“The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask them here than that the matter should pass outside our control.”<br/>She was silent and her face was still very pale. At last she looked up with something reckless and defiant in her manner.<br/>“Well, I’ll answer,” she said. “What are your questions?”<br/>“Did you correspond with Sir Charles?”<br/>“I certainly wrote to him once or twice to acknowledge his delicacy and his generosity.”<br/>“Have you the dates of those letters?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“Have you ever met him?”<br/>“Yes, once or twice, when he came into Coombe Tracey. He was a very retiring man, and he preferred to do good by stealth.”<br/>“But if you saw him so seldom and wrote so seldom, how did he know enough about your affairs to be able to help you, as you say that he has done?”<br/>She met my difficulty with the utmost readiness.<br/>“There were several gentlemen who knew my sad history and united to help me. One was Mr. Stapleton, a neighbour and intimate friend of Sir Charles’s. He was exceedingly kind, and it was through him that Sir Charles learned about my affairs.”<br/>I knew already that Sir Charles Baskerville had made Stapleton his almoner upon several occasions, so the lady’s statement bore the impress of truth upon it.<br/>“Did you ever write to Sir Charles asking him to meet you?” I continued.<br/>Mrs. Lyons flushed with anger again. “Really, sir, this is a very extraordinary question.”<br/>“I am sorry, madam, but I must repeat it.”<br/>“Then I answer, certainly not.”<br/>“Not on the very day of Sir Charles’s death?”<br/>The flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her dry lips could not speak the “No” which I saw rather than heard.<br/>“Surely your memory deceives you,” said I. “I could even quote a passage of your letter. It ran ‘Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o’clock.’”<br/>I thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme effort.<br/>“Is there no such thing as a gentleman?” she gasped.<br/>“You do Sir Charles an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you wrote it?”<br/>“Yes, I did write it,” she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of words. “I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an interview, I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me.”<br/>“But why at such an hour?”<br/>“Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get there earlier.”<br/>“But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?”<br/>“Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor’s house?”<br/>“Well, what happened when you did get there?”<br/>“I never went.”<br/>“Mrs. Lyons!”<br/>“No, I swear it to you on all I hold sacred. I never went. Something intervened to prevent my going.”<br/>“What was that?”<br/>“That is a private matter. I cannot tell it.”<br/>“You acknowledge then that you made an appointment with Sir Charles at the very hour and place at which he met his death, but you deny that you kept the appointment.”<br/>“That is the truth.”<br/>Again, and again I cross-questioned her, but I could never get past that point.<br/>“Mrs. Lyons,” said I as I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, “you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will find how seriously you are compromised. If your position is innocent, why did you in the first instance deny having written to Sir Charles upon that date?”<br/>“Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and that I might find myself involved in a scandal.”<br/>“And why were you so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy your letter?”<br/>“If you have read the letter you will know.”<br/>“I did not say that I had read all the letter.”<br/>“You quoted some of it.”<br/>“I quoted the postscript. The letter had, as I said, been burned and it was not all legible. I ask you once again why it was that you were so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy this letter which he received on the day of his death.”<br/>“The matter is a very private one.”<br/>“The more reason why you should avoid a public investigation.”<br/>“I will tell you, then. If you have heard anything of my unhappy history you will know that I made a rash marriage and had reason to regret it.”<br/>“I have heard so much.”<br/>“My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor. The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility that he may force me to live with him. At the time that I wrote this letter to Sir Charles I had learned that there was a prospect of my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant everything to me—peace of mind, happiness, self-respect—everything. I knew Sir Charles’s generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story from my own lips, he would help me.”<br/>“Then how is it that you did not go?”<br/>“Because I received help in the interval from another source.”<br/>“Why then, did you not write to Sir Charles and explain this?”<br/>“So, I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next morning.”<br/>The woman’s story hung coherently together, and all my questions were unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed, instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time of the tragedy.<br/>It was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to Baskerville Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again, I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady’s face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale? Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy? Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought for among the stone huts upon the moor.<br/>And that was a most vague direction. I realised it as I drove back and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people. Barrymore’s only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it, I should find out from his own lips who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it, I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where my master had failed.<br/>Luck had been against us again and again in this inquiry, but now at last it came to my aid. And the messenger of good fortune was none other than Mr. Frankland, who was standing, grey-whiskered and red-faced, outside the gate of his garden, which opened on to the highroad along which I travelled.<br/>“Good-day, Dr. Watson,” cried he with unwonted good humour, “you must really give your horses a rest and come in to have a glass of wine and to congratulate me.”<br/>My feelings towards him were very far from being friendly after what I had heard of his treatment of his daughter, but I was anxious to send Perkins and the wagonette home, and the opportunity was a good one. I alighted and sent a message to Sir Henry that I should walk over in time for dinner. Then I followed Frankland into his dining-room.<br/>“It is a great day for me, sir—one of the red-letter days of my life,” he cried with many chuckles. “I have brought off a double event. I mean to teach them in these parts that law is law, and that there is a man here who does not fear to invoke it. I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton’s park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We’ll teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I’ve closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Watson, and both in my favour. I haven’t had such a day since I had Sir John Morland for trespass because he shot in his own warren.”<br/>“How on earth did you do that?”<br/>“Look it up in the books, sir. It will repay reading—Frankland v. Morland, Court of Queen’s Bench. It cost me £200, but I got my verdict.”<br/>“Did it do you any good?”<br/>“None, sir, none. I am proud to say that I had no interest in the matter. I act entirely from a sense of public duty. I have no doubt, for example, that the Fernworthy people will burn me in effigy tonight. I told the police last time they did it that they should stop these disgraceful exhibitions. The County Constabulary is in a scandalous state, sir, and it has not afforded me the protection to which I am entitled. The case of Frankland v. Regina will bring the matter before the attention of the public. I told them that they would have occasion to regret their treatment of me, and already my words have come true.”<br/>“How so?” I asked.<br/>The old man put on a very knowing expression. “Because I could tell them what they are dying to know; but nothing would induce me to help the rascals in any way.”<br/>I had been casting round for some excuse by which I could get away from his gossip, but now I began to wish to hear more of it. I had seen enough of the contrary nature of the old sinner to understand that any strong sign of interest would be the surest way to stop his confidences.<br/>“Some poaching case, no doubt?” said I with an indifferent manner.<br/>“Ha, ha, my boy, a very much more important matter than that! What about the convict on the moor?”<br/>I stared. “You don’t mean that you know where he is?” said I.<br/>“I may not know exactly where he is, but I am quite sure that I could help the police to lay their hands on him. Has it never struck you that the way to catch that man was to find out where he got his food and so trace it to him?”<br/>He certainly seemed to be getting uncomfortably near the truth. “No doubt,” said I; “but how do you know that he is anywhere upon the moor?”<br/>“I know it because I have seen with my own eyes the messenger who takes him his food.”<br/>My heart sank for Barrymore. It was a serious thing to be in the power of this spiteful old busybody. But his next remark took a weight from my mind.<br/>“You’ll be surprised to hear that his food is taken to him by a child. I see him every day through my telescope upon the roof. He passes along the same path at the same hour, and to whom should he be going except to the convict?”<br/>Here was luck indeed! And yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A child! Barrymore had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was on his track, and not upon the convict’s, that Frankland had stumbled. If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But incredulity and indifference were evidently my strongest cards.<br/>“I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of the moorland shepherds taking out his father’s dinner.”<br/>The least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat. His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his grey whiskers bristled like those of an angry cat.<br/>“Indeed, sir!” said he, pointing out over the wide-stretching moor. “Do you see that Black Tor over yonder? Well, do you see the low hill beyond with the thornbush upon it? It is the stoniest part of the whole moor. Is that a place where a shepherd would be likely to take his station? Your suggestion, sir, is a most absurd one.”<br/>I meekly answered that I had spoken without knowing all the facts. My submission pleased him and led him to further confidences.<br/>“You may be sure, sir, that I have very good grounds before I come to an opinion. I have seen the boy again and again with his bundle. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, I have been able—but wait a moment, Dr. Watson. Do my eyes deceive me, or is there at the present moment something moving upon that hillside?”<br/>It was several miles off, but I could distinctly see a small dark dot against the dull green and grey.<br/>“Come, sir, come!” cried Frankland, rushing upstairs. “You will see with your own eyes and judge for yourself.”<br/>The telescope, a formidable instrument mounted upon a tripod, stood upon the flat leads of the house. Frankland clapped his eye to it and gave a cry of satisfaction.<br/>“Quick, Dr. Watson, quick, before he passes over the hill!”<br/>There he was, sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest, I saw the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one who dreads pursuit. Then he vanished over the hill.<br/>“Well! Am I right?”<br/>“Certainly, there is a boy who seems to have some secret errand.”<br/>“And what the errand is even a county constable could guess. But not one word shall they have from me, and I bind you to secrecy also, Dr. Watson. Not a word! You understand!”<br/>“Just as you wish.”<br/>“They have treated me shamefully—shamefully. When the facts come out in Frankland v. Regina, I venture to think that a thrill of indignation will run through the country. Nothing would induce me to help the police in any way. For all they cared it might have been me, instead of my effigy, which these rascals burned at the stake. Surely you are not going! You will help me to empty the decanter in honour of this great occasion!”<br/>But I resisted all his solicitations and succeeded in dissuading him from his announced intention of walking home with me. I kept the road as long as his eye was on me, and then I struck off across the moor and made for the stony hill over which the boy had disappeared. Everything was working in my favour, and I swore that it should not be through lack of energy or perseverance that I should miss the chance which fortune had thrown in my way.<br/>The sun was already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and grey shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great grey bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his hiding place—his secret was within my grasp.<br/>As I approached the hut, walking as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself that the place had indeed been used as a habitation. A vague pathway among the boulders led to the dilapidated opening which served as a door. All was silent within. The unknown might be lurking there, or he might be prowling on the moor. My nerves tingled with the sense of adventure.<br/>In the hut I saw some blankets rolled in a waterproof lay upon that very stone slab upon which Neolithic man had once slumbered. A fire leaping in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A pannikin and a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and sitting at this table was—my wife and Miss Hope, braiding circlets from flowers. Upon the table stood a small cloth bundle—the same, no doubt, which I had seen through the telescope upon the shoulder of the boy. I also saw the boy himself, a flower circlet askew on his head and eating treats Mary and Molly must have brought from Baskerville Hall, which was much finer fare than what he brought. A loaf of bread, a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. I was too confused to make a sound, but I was soon spotted. The boy left the hut with the last treat in his fist and my wife leapt into my arms.<br/>“So, you have found him out. Don’t be cross, my love.”<br/>“Who?”<br/>“Mr. Holmes,” Molly rolled her eyes.<br/>“We discovered him skulking about the grounds of Baskerville Hall and he swore us to secrecy,” Mary explained, “We only just found out ourselves that he was staying here.”<br/>“I must confess that I eavesdropped on your conversation with Mr. Barrymore,” Molly admitted sheepishly.<br/>Becoming contrite herself Mary said, “And it was I who took your revolver. We knew that it was dangerous with Mr. Selden perhaps still about, but we had to see if the fool really was staying on the moor.”<br/>“I mean look at this place,” Mary and Molly’s contrition was soon forgotten now that they had a chance to scold. Mary swept her hand around the hut and its Spartan comforts. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof, I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. “If he had any sense, he would have rented a room under one of his disguises.” Molly said nothing but frowned in agreement.<br/>Outside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers of Baskerville Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house of the Stapletons. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden evening light, yet I had long since learned that the moor was not as it seemed. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I got the revolver from Mary; in case the approaching person was more sinister than the inhabitant of the hut. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut.<br/>“It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in.”</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Death on the Moor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>There is a moment in this chapter for which I channeled the 2005 Pride and Prejudice hand scene.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Holmes!” I cried— “Holmes!”<br/>“Come out,” said he, “and please be careful with the revolver.”<br/>I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.<br/>“You saw me on the night of the convict hunt, when I was so imprudent as to allow the moon to rise behind me?”<br/>“Yes, I saw you then.”<br/>“Mrs. Watson and Miss Hope fetched you?”<br/>“No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where to look.”<br/>“The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make it out when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens. So, your wife told me you have been to Coombe Tracey?”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“To see Mrs. Laura Lyons?”<br/>“Exactly.”<br/>“Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel lines, and when we unite our results, I expect we shall have a fairly full knowledge of the case.”<br/>“I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that case of blackmailing.”<br/>“That was what I wished you to think.”<br/>“Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!” I cried with some bitterness. “I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Holmes. You asked my wife to keep secrets from me!”<br/>“My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a trick upon you. Had I been with Sir Henry and you it is confident that my point of view would have been the same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about as I could not possibly have done had I been living in the Hall, and I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my weight at a critical moment. As for your wife,” he glared at a grinning Mary, “That was as unforeseen to me as it was to you. Thankfully the distraction has done little to encumber either of our sleuthing.”<br/>“But why keep me in the dark?”<br/>“For you to know could not have helped us and might possibly have led to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an unnecessary risk would be run. The same reason I didn’t tell those two where I was staying after they found me out. I brought Cartwright down with me—you remember the little chap at the express office—and he has seen after my simple wants: a loaf of bread and a clean collar. What does man want more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of feet, and both have been invaluable.”<br/>“Then my reports have all been wasted!”—My voice trembled as I recalled the pains and the pride with which I had composed them.<br/>“Not to mention that you put a child in danger!” scolded Molly.<br/>“I have already settled this. Cartwright was in no danger. Selden never targeted children and he wouldn’t risk his capture. And whoever is after Baskerville would have no reason to suspect him.”<br/>“We settled nothing. You left rather than face argument. ‘No reason to suspect’? I remember once you did not accept that rationale. Besides, hounds are not as discriminative as murderers. Unless, it truly is a supernatural being that only hunts Baskervilles?”<br/>Holmes ignored her and took a bundle of papers from his pocket.<br/>“Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult case.”<br/>I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me and the concerns that Mary and Molly voiced added fuel to my anger, but I felt in my heart that he was right in what he said and that his arrangements really were the best for our purpose.<br/>“That’s better,” said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. “And now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Laura Lyons—it was not difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone today it is exceedingly probable that I should have gone tomorrow.”<br/>The sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned chill and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together in the twilight, crowned with flowers, I told Holmes and the ladies of my conversation with Mrs. Lyons. So interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was satisfied.<br/>“This is most important,” said he when I had concluded. “It fills up a gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and the man Stapleton?”<br/>“I did not know of a close intimacy.”<br/>“There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife—”<br/>“His wife?” cried three voices.<br/>“I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Stapleton is in reality his wife.” He seemed a bit bitter about that information and for some reason refused to meet Mary’s eyes. Molly was simply as shocked as I was.<br/>“Good heavens, Holmes! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have permitted Sir Henry to fall in love with her?”<br/>“Sir Henry’s falling in love with Mrs. Stapleton could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister.”<br/>“But why this elaborate deception?”<br/>“Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.”<br/>“Cad!” Mary and Molly declared.<br/>All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible—a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart.<br/>“It is he, then, who is our enemy—it is he who dogged us in London?”<br/>“So, I read the riddle.”<br/>“And the warning—it must have come from her!”<br/>“Exactly.”<br/>The shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed through the darkness which had girt me so long.<br/>“But are you sure of this, Holmes? How do you know that the woman is his wife?”<br/>“Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in the north of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that the man who had owned it—the name was different—had disappeared with his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete.”<br/>The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows.<br/>“If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Laura Lyons come in?” I asked.<br/>“That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her husband. In that case, regarding Stapleton as an unmarried man, she counted no doubt upon becoming his wife.”<br/>“That poor girl,” Mary pitied, “To be used by one man after another like that.”<br/>In the firelight I could see how pale Molly’s face had become, likely thinking how she could be living a very similar life to Mrs. Lyons if her father cared for her as little as Frankland did for his. Sherlock noticed as well and took her hand in silent comfort.<br/>“And when she is undeceived?” I asked.<br/>“Why, then we may find the lady of service. It must be our first duty to see her—both of us—tomorrow. All three of you must be wanted at Baskerville Hall.”<br/>The last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violet sky.<br/>“One last question, Holmes,” I said as I rose. “Surely there is no longer a need of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he after?”<br/>Holmes’s voice sank as he answered:<br/>“It is murder, Watson—refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so. Another day—two at the most—and I have my case complete, but until then guard Sir Henry as closely as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission today has justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his side. Hark!”<br/>A terrible scream—a prolonged yell of horror and anguish—burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins.<br/>“Oh, my God!” I gasped. “What is it? What does it mean?”<br/>Holmes had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward, his face peering into the darkness.<br/>“Hush!” he whispered. “Hush!”<br/>The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before.<br/>“Where is it?” Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. “Where is it, Watson?”<br/>“There, I think.” I pointed into the darkness.<br/>“No, there!”<br/>Again, the agonised cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea.<br/>“The hound!” cried Holmes. “Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!”<br/>He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. Mary and Molly came at my heels.<br/>“You can’t come!”<br/>“What! Stay behind and be alone!” Never before had I seen my wife and her friend so frightened. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night.<br/>I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground.<br/>“He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late.”<br/>“No, no, surely not!”<br/>“Fool that I was to not move against him sooner. And you, Watson, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened, we’ll avenge him!”<br/>Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its dreary face.<br/>“Can you see anything?”<br/>“Nothing.”<br/>“But, hark, what is that?”<br/>A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realise that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us—the body of Sir Henry Baskerville!<br/>There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit—the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness.<br/>“The brute! The brute!” I cried with clenched hands. “Oh Holmes, I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate.”<br/>“I am more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know—how could I know—that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?”<br/>“That we should have heard his screams—my God, those screams! —and yet have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant. And Stapleton, where is he? He shall answer for this deed.”<br/>“He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered—the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!”<br/>We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose, we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed.<br/>“Why should we not seize him at once?”<br/>“Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet.”<br/>“Besides, Sir Henry is not dead.”<br/>We turned to Molly who knelt beside the body. “This man has a beard.”<br/>Holmes came to take a look beside her. “It is—why, it is my neighbour, the convict!”<br/>With feverish haste we turned the body over, and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes. It was indeed the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock—the face of Selden, the criminal.<br/>Then in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap—it was all Sir Henry’s. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy.<br/>“Then the clothes have been the poor devil’s death,” said he. “It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Henry’s—the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability—and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?”<br/>“He heard him.”<br/>“To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this convict into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?”<br/>“A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our conjectures are correct—”<br/>“I presume nothing.”<br/>“Well, then, why this hound should be loose tonight. I suppose that it does not always run loose upon the moor. Stapleton would not let it go unless he had reason to think that Sir Henry would be there.”<br/>“My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain forever a mystery. The question now is, what shall we do with this poor wretch’s body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens.”<br/>“I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate with the police.”<br/>“Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Watson, what’s this? It’s the man himself, by all that’s wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions—not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground.”<br/>A figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and then came on again.<br/>“Why, Dr. Watson, that’s not you, is it? You are the last man that I should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night, certainly not with your wife and Miss Hope. But, dear me, what’s this? Somebody hurt? Not—don’t tell me that it is our friend Sir Henry!” He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers.<br/>“Who—who’s this?” he stammered.<br/>“It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown.”<br/>Stapleton turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from Holmes to me. “Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?”<br/>“He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. We were taking a moonlight stroll on the moor when we heard a cry.”<br/>“I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about Sir Henry.”<br/>“Why about Sir Henry in particular?” I could not help asking.<br/>“Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come, I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I heard cries upon the moor. By the way”—his eyes darted again from my face to Holmes’s— “did you hear anything else besides a cry?”<br/>“No,” said Holmes; “did you?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“What do you mean, then?”<br/>“Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom hound, and so on. It is said to be heard at night upon the moor. I was wondering if there were any evidence of such a sound tonight.”<br/>“We heard nothing of the kind,” said I.<br/>“And what is your theory of this poor fellow’s death?”<br/>“I have no doubt that anxiety and exposure have driven him off his head. He has rushed about the moor in a crazy state and eventually fallen over here and broken his neck.”<br/>“That seems the most reasonable theory,” said Stapleton, and he gave a sigh which I took to indicate his relief. “What do you think about it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”<br/>My friend bowed his compliments. “You are quick at identification,” said he.<br/>“We have been expecting you in these parts since Dr. Watson came down. You are in time to see a tragedy.”<br/>“Yes, indeed. I have no doubt that my friend’s explanation will cover the facts. I will take an unpleasant remembrance back to London with me tomorrow.”<br/>“Oh, you return tomorrow?”<br/>“That is my intention.”<br/>“I hope your visit has cast some light upon those occurrences which have puzzled us?”<br/>Holmes shrugged his shoulders.<br/>“One cannot always have the success for which one hopes. An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours. It has not been a satisfactory case.”<br/>My friend spoke in his frankest and most unconcerned manner. Stapleton still looked hard at him. Then he turned to me.<br/>“I would suggest carrying this poor fellow to my house, but it would give my sister such a fright that I do not feel justified in doing it. I think that if we put something over his face, he will be safe until morning.”<br/>And so, it was arranged. Resisting Stapleton’s offer of hospitality, our party set off to Baskerville Hall, leaving the naturalist to return alone. Looking back, we saw the figure moving slowly away over the broad moor, and behind him that one black smudge on the silvered slope which showed where the man was lying who had come so horribly to his end.<br/>“We’re at close grips at last,” said Holmes as we walked together across the moor. “What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel.”<br/>“I am sorry that he has seen you.”<br/>“And so was I at first. But there was no getting out of it.”<br/>“What effect do you think it will have upon his plans now that he knows you are here?”<br/>“It may cause him to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us.”<br/>“Why should we not arrest him at once?”<br/>“My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument’s sake, that we had him arrested tonight, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There’s the devilish cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent, we could get some evidence, but if we were to drag this great dog to the light of day it would not help us in putting a rope round the neck of its master.”<br/>“Surely we have a case.”<br/>“Not a shadow of one—only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence.”<br/>“There is Sir Charles’s death.”<br/>“Found dead without a mark upon him. You and I know that he died of sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him, but how are we to get twelve stolid jurymen to know it? What signs are there of a hound? Where are the marks of its fangs? Of course, we know that a hound does not bite a dead body and that Sir Charles was dead before ever the brute overtook him. But we have to prove all this, and we are not in a position to do it.”<br/>“Well, then, tonight?”<br/>“We are not much better off tonight. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man’s death. We never saw the hound. We heard it, but we could not prove that it was running upon this man’s trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish one.”<br/>“And how do you propose to do so?”<br/>“I have great hopes of what Mrs. Laura Lyons may do for us when the position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as well. Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the day is past to have the upper hand at last.”<br/>I could draw nothing further from him, and he walked, lost in thought, as far as the Baskerville gates.<br/>“Are you coming up?”<br/>“Yes; I see no reason for further concealment. But one last word, Watson. Say nothing of the hound to Sir Henry. Let him think that Selden’s death was as Stapleton would have us believe. He will have a better nerve for the ordeal which he will have to undergo tomorrow, when he is engaged, if I remember your report aright, to dine with these people.”<br/>“And so am I.”<br/>“Then you must excuse yourself and he must go alone. That will be easily arranged. And now, if we are too late for dinner, I think that we are all ready for our suppers.”</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. The Hound of the Baskervilles</h2></a>
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    <p>When we arrived, Sir Henry and Mr. Barrymore were just about to leave to search for Mary, Molly, and I. Their relief was short-lived when they saw the blood on Molly’s dress from when she examined Seldon. Molly tried to her best to reassure them as Mary took her upstairs to change. Sir Henry was not very surprised to see Sherlock Holmes, for he had for some days been expecting that recent events would bring him down from London. He did raise his eyebrows, however, when he found that my friend had neither any luggage nor any explanations for its absence. Between us we soon supplied his wants, and then over a belated supper we explained to the baronet as much of our experience as it seemed desirable that he should know. But first I had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little willful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.<br/>“I’ve been moping in the house all day since Watson went off in the morning,” said the baronet. “I guess I should have some credit, for I have kept my promise. If I hadn’t sworn not to go about alone, I might have had a more lively evening, for I had a message from Stapleton asking me over there.”<br/>“I have no doubt that you would have had a more lively evening,” said Holmes drily. “By the way, I don’t suppose you appreciate that we have been mourning over you as having broken your neck?”<br/>Sir Henry opened his eyes. “How was that?”<br/>“This poor wretch was dressed in your clothes. I fear your servant who gave them to him may get into trouble with the police.”<br/>“That is unlikely. There was no mark on any of them, as far as I know.”<br/>“That’s lucky for him—in fact, it’s lucky for all of you, since you are all on the wrong side of the law in this matter. I am not sure that as a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole household. Watson’s reports are most incriminating documents.”<br/>“But how about the case?” asked the baronet. “Have you made anything out of the tangle? I don’t know that Watson and I are much the wiser since we came down.”<br/>“I think that I shall be in a position to make the situation rather more clear to you before long. It has been an exceedingly difficult and most complicated business. There are several points upon which we still want light—but it is coming all the same.”<br/>“We’ve had one experience, as Watson has no doubt told you. We heard the hound on the moor, so I can swear that it is not all empty superstition. I had something to do with dogs when I was out West, and I know one when I hear one. If you can muzzle that one and put him on a chain, I’ll be ready to swear you are the greatest detective of all time.”<br/>“I think I will muzzle him and chain him all right if you will give me your help.”<br/>“Whatever you tell me to do I will do.”<br/>“Very good; and I will ask you also to do it blindly, without always asking the reason.”<br/>“Just as you like.”<br/>“If you will do this, I think the chances are that our little problem will soon be solved. I have no doubt—”<br/>He stopped suddenly and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of alertness and expectation.<br/>“What is it?” we both cried.<br/>I could see as he looked down that he was repressing some internal emotion. His features were still composed, but his eyes shone with amused exultation.<br/>“Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur,” said he as he waved his hand towards the line of portraits which covered the opposite wall. “Watson won’t allow that I know anything of art but that is mere jealousy because our views upon the subject differ. Now, these are a really very fine series of portraits.”<br/>“Well, I’m glad to hear you say so,” said Sir Henry, glancing with some surprise at my friend. “I don’t pretend to know much about these things, and I’d be a better judge of a horse or a steer than of a picture. I didn’t know that you found time for such things.”<br/>“I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now. That’s a Kneller, I’ll swear, that lady in the blue silk over yonder, and the stout gentleman with the wig ought to be a Reynolds. They are all family portraits, I presume?”<br/>“Everyone.”<br/>“Do you know the names?”<br/>“Barrymore has been coaching me in them, and I think I can say my lessons fairly well.”<br/>“Who is the gentleman with the telescope?”<br/>“That is Rear-Admiral Baskerville, who served under Rodney in the West Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William Baskerville, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons under Pitt.”<br/>“And this Cavalier opposite to me—the one with the black velvet and the lace?”<br/>“Ah, you have a right to know about him. That is the cause of all the mischief, the wicked Hugo, who started the Hound of the Baskervilles. We’re not likely to forget him.”<br/>I gazed with interest and some surprise upon the portrait.<br/>“Dear me!” said Holmes, “he seems a quiet, meek-mannered man enough, but I dare say that there was a lurking devil in his eyes. I had pictured him as a more robust and ruffianly person.”<br/>“There’s no doubt about the authenticity, for the name and the date, 1647, are on the back of the canvas.”<br/>Holmes said little more, but the picture of the old roysterer seemed to have a fascination for him, and his eyes were continually fixed upon it during supper. It was not until later, when Sir Henry had gone to his room, that I was able to follow the trend of his thoughts. He led me back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall.<br/>“Do you see anything there?”<br/>I looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them. It was not a brutal countenance, but it was prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye.<br/>“Is it like anyone you know?”<br/>“There is something of Sir Henry about the jaw.”<br/>“Just a suggestion, perhaps. But wait an instant!” He stood upon a chair, and, holding up the light in his left hand, he curved his right arm over the broad hat and round the long ringlets.<br/>“Good heavens!” I cried in amazement.<br/>The face of Stapleton had sprung out of the canvas.<br/>“Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.”<br/>“But this is marvelous. It might be his portrait.”<br/>“Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual. A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation. The fellow is a Baskerville—that is evident.”<br/>“With designs upon the succession.”<br/>“Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our most obvious missing links. We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!” He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.<br/>I was up betimes in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive.<br/>“Yes, we should have a full day today,” he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action. “The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We’ll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, lean-jawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes.”<br/>“Have you been on the moor already?”<br/>“I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut, as a dog does at his master’s grave, if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety.”<br/>“What is the next move?”<br/>“To see Sir Henry. Ah, here he is!”<br/>“Good-morning, Holmes,” said the baronet. “You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff.”<br/>“That is the exact situation. Watson was asking for orders.”<br/>“And so, do I.”<br/>“Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends the Stapletons tonight.”<br/>“I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I am sure that they would be very glad to see you.”<br/>“I fear that Watson and I must go to London.”<br/>“To London?”<br/>“Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present juncture.”<br/>“Mary and I shall be going with them,” said Molly. She was looking at Holmes and the two of them seemed to have a silent conversation. “We have imposed on your hospitality long enough.” Sir Henry tried to convince her to the contrary but could not. The baronet’s face perceptibly lengthened.<br/>“I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone.”<br/>“My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. Watson and I hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them that message?”<br/>“If you insist upon it.”<br/>“There is no alternative, I assure you.”<br/>I saw by the baronet’s clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he regarded as our desertion.<br/>“When do you desire to go?” he asked coldly.<br/>“Immediately after breakfast. We will drive in to Coombe Tracey, but Watson will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you. Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton to tell him that you regret that you cannot come.”<br/>“I have a good mind to go to London with you,” said the baronet. “Why should I stay here alone?”<br/>“Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay.”<br/>“All right, then, I’ll stay.”<br/>“One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home.”<br/>“To walk across the moor?”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to do.”<br/>“This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in your nerve and courage, I would not suggest it, but it is essential that you should do it.”<br/>“Then I will do it.”<br/>“And as you value your life do not go across the moor in any direction save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home.”<br/>“I will do just what you say.”<br/>“Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon.”<br/>I was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Holmes had said to Stapleton on the night before that his visit would terminate next day. It had not crossed my mind however, that he would wish me to go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for it, however, but implicit obedience; so, we bade good-bye to our rueful friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A small boy was waiting upon the platform.<br/>“Any orders, sir?”<br/>“You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocketbook which I have dropped he is to send it by registered post to Baker Street.”<br/>“Yes, sir. Shall I be escorting the ladies as well?” the boy stood taller at the prospect of such an assignment. <br/>“No,” Sherlock smiled, “The ladies and their luggage shall stay here as I’m sure that they will not listen to sense. Go ask at the station office if there is a message for me.”<br/>The boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes handed to me. It ran:<br/>Wire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant. Arrive five-forty. Lestrade.<br/>“That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your acquaintance, Mrs. Laura Lyons.”<br/>His plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the baronet in order to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone, while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I seemed to see our nets drawing closer around that lean-jawed pike.<br/>While Holmes and I sought out Mrs. Lyons, the ladies set about to amuse themselves in Coombe Tracey, not wanting to overwhelm her. Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her.<br/>“I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville,” said he. “My friend here, Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter.”<br/>“What have I withheld?” she asked defiantly.<br/>“You have confessed that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten o’clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have withheld what the connection is between these events.”<br/>“There is no connection.”<br/>“In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection, after all. I wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Lyons. We regard this case as one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend Mr. Stapleton but his wife as well.”<br/>The lady sprang from her chair.<br/>“His wife!” she cried.<br/>“The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his sister is really his wife.”<br/>Mrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure of her grip.<br/>“His wife!” she said again. “His wife! He is not a married man.”<br/>Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.<br/>“Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so—!”<br/>The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words.<br/>“I have come prepared to do so,” said Holmes, drawing several papers from his pocket. “Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is indorsed ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,’ but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver’s private school. Read them and see if you can doubt the identity of these people.”<br/>She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face of a desperate woman.<br/>“Mr. Holmes,” she said, “this man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why—why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you, and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend.”<br/>“I entirely believe you, madam,” said Sherlock Holmes. “The recital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by Stapleton?”<br/>“He dictated it.”<br/>“I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?”<br/>“Exactly.”<br/>“And then after you had sent the letter, he dissuaded you from keeping the appointment?”<br/>“He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us.”<br/>“He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir Charles?”<br/>“He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining silent.”<br/>“Quite so. But you had your suspicions?”<br/>She hesitated and looked down.<br/>“I knew him,” she said. “But if he had kept faith with me, I should always have done so with him.”<br/>“I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape,” said Sherlock Holmes. “You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for some months very near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish you good-morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again.”<br/>“Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in front of us,” said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. “I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year ’66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night.”<br/>The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the practical man.<br/>“Anything good?” he asked.<br/>“The biggest thing for years,” said Holmes. “We have two hours before we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night air of Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don’t suppose you will forget your first visit.”<br/>One of Sherlock Holmes’s defects—if, indeed, one may call it a defect—was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we were about to make our final effort, and yet Holmes had said nothing, and I could only surmise what his course of action would be. My nerves thrilled with anticipation when at last the cold wind upon our faces and the dark, void spaces on either side of the narrow road told me that we were back upon the moor once again. Every stride of the horses and every turn of the wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure.<br/>Our conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver of the hired wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial matters when our nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me, after that unnatural restraint, when we at last passed Frankland’s house and knew that we were drawing near to the Hall and to the scene of action. We left Mary and Molly there with the Barrymores. The wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe Tracey forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House.<br/>“Are you armed, Lestrade?”<br/>The little detective smiled. “As long as I have my trousers, I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it.”<br/>“Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies.”<br/>“You’re mighty close about this affair, Mr. Holmes. What’s the game now?”<br/>“A waiting game.”<br/>“My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place,” said the detective with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes of the hill and at the huge lake of fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. “I see the lights of a house ahead of us.”<br/>“That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must request you to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper.”<br/>We moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for the house, but Holmes halted us when we were about two hundred yards from it.<br/>“This will do,” said he. “These rocks upon the right make an admirable screen.”<br/>“We are to wait here?”<br/>“Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this hollow, Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not, Watson? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What are those latticed windows at this end?”<br/>“I think they are the kitchen windows.”<br/>“And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?”<br/>“That is certainly the dining-room.”<br/>“The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep forward quietly and see what they are doing—but for heaven’s sake don’t let them know that they are watched!”<br/>I tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which surrounded the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached a point whence I could look straight through the uncurtained window.<br/>There were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton. They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing heavily upon his mind.<br/>As I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir Henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of boots upon gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other side of the wall under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the naturalist pause at the door of an out-house in the corner of the orchard. A key turned in a lock, and as he passed in there was a curious scuffling noise from within. He was only a minute or so inside, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed me and reentered the house. I saw him rejoin his guest, and I crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell them what I had seen.<br/>“You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?” Holmes asked when I had finished my report.<br/>“No.”<br/>“Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room except the kitchen?”<br/>“I cannot think where she is.”<br/>I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low but thick and well defined. The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads of the distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface. Holmes’s face was turned towards it, and he muttered impatiently as he watched its sluggish drift.<br/>“It’s moving towards us, Watson.”<br/>“Is that serious?”<br/>“Very serious, indeed—the one thing upon earth which could have disarranged my plans. He can’t be very long, now. It is already ten o’clock. Our success and even his life may depend upon his coming out before the fog is over the path.”<br/>The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright, while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft, uncertain light. Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky. Broad bars of golden light from the lower windows stretched across the orchard and the moor. One of them was suddenly shut off. The servants had left the kitchen. There only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the two men, the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted over their cigars.<br/>Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand passionately upon the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his impatience.<br/>“If he isn’t out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered. In half an hour we won’t be able to see our hands in front of us.”<br/>“Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?”<br/>“Yes, I think it would be as well.”<br/>So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on.<br/>“We are going too far,” said Holmes. “We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before he can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are.” He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. “Thank God, I think that I hear him coming.”<br/>A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As he walked, he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a man who is ill at ease.<br/>“Hist!” cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. “Look out! It’s coming!”<br/>There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes’s elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.<br/>With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable, he was mortal, and if we could wound him, we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track, we heard scream after scream from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature’s flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was dead.<br/>Sir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his collar, and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in time. Already our friend’s eyelids shivered and he made a feeble effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between the baronet’s teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at us.<br/>“My God!” he whispered. “What was it? What, in heaven’s name, was it?”<br/>“It’s dead, whatever it is,” said Holmes. “We’ve laid the family ghost once and forever.”<br/>In mere size and strength, it was a terrible creature which was lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two—gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness.<br/>“Phosphorus,” I said.<br/>“A cunning preparation of it,” said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal. “There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to receive him.”<br/>“You have saved my life.”<br/>“Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?”<br/>“Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?”<br/>“To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures tonight. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall.”<br/>He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering with his face buried in his hands.<br/>“We must leave you now,” said Holmes. “The rest of our work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we only want our man.<br/>“It’s a thousand to one against our finding him at the house,” he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. “Those shots must have told him that the game was up.”<br/>“We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them.”<br/>“He followed the hound to call him off—of that you may be certain. No, no, he’s gone by this time! But we’ll search the house and make sure.”<br/>The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked.<br/>“There’s someone in here,” cried Lestrade. “I can hear a movement. Open this door!”<br/>A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room.<br/>But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement.<br/>The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes—eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning—stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest, I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash across her neck.<br/>“The brute!” cried Holmes. “Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion.”<br/>She opened her eyes again.<br/>“Is he safe?” she asked. “Has he escaped?”<br/>“He cannot escape us, madam.”<br/>“No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“And the hound?”<br/>“It is dead.”<br/>She gave a long sigh of satisfaction.<br/>“Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!” She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. “But this is nothing—nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool.” She broke into passionate sobbing as she spoke.<br/>“You bear him no good will, madam,” said Holmes. “Tell us then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so atone.”<br/>“There is but one place where he can have fled,” she answered. “There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he would fly.”<br/>The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the lamp towards it.<br/>“See,” said he. “No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight.”<br/>She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment.<br/>“He may find his way in, but never out,” she cried. “How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out today. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!”<br/>It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night’s adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.<br/>And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realise the horror of this woman’s life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband’s track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it, it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air. “Meyers, Toronto,” was printed on the leather inside.<br/>“It is worth a mud bath,” said he. “It is our friend Sir Henry’s missing boot.”<br/>“Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight.”<br/>“Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight. We know at least that he came so far in safety.”<br/>But more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried.<br/>Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it was the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the debris.<br/>“A dog!” said Holmes. “By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an emergency he could keep the hound in the out-house at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and by the desire to frighten old Sir Charles to death. No wonder the poor devil of a convict ran and screamed, even as our friend did, and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw such a creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of driving your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder”—he swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor.</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. A Retrospection</h2></a>
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    <p>It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carére, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very afternoon, so that it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion.<br/>“The whole course of events,” said Holmes, “from the point of view of the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my indexed list of cases.”<br/>“Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from memory.”<br/>“Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers’ ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So, each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Carére has blurred my recollection of Baskerville Hall. Tomorrow some other little problem may be submitted to my notice which will in turn dispossess the fair French lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as the case of the hound goes, however, I will give you the course of events as nearly as I can, and you will suggest anything which I may have forgotten.<br/>“My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did not lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Baskerville. He was a son of that Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father’s. He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire. His reason for attempting this special line of business was that he had struck up an acquaintance with a consumptive tutor upon the voyage home, and that he had used this man’s ability to make the undertaking a success. Fraser, the tutor, died however, and the school which had begun well sank from disrepute into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient to change their name to Stapleton, and he brought the remains of his fortune, his schemes for the future, and his taste for entomology to the south of England. I learned at the British Museum that he was a recognized authority upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur has been permanently attached to a certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe.<br/>“We now come to that portion of his life which has proved to be of such intense interest to us. The fellow had evidently made inquiry and found that only two lives intervened between him and a valuable estate. When he went to Devonshire his plans were, I believe, exceedingly hazy, but that he meant mischief from the first is evident from the way in which he took his wife with him in the character of his sister. The idea of using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged. He meant in the end to have the estate, and he was ready to use any tool or run any risk for that end. His first act was to establish himself as near to his ancestral home as he could, and his second was to cultivate a friendship with Sir Charles Baskerville and with the neighbours.<br/>“The baronet himself told him about the family hound, and so prepared the way for his own death. Stapleton, as I will continue to call him, knew that the old man’s heart was weak and that a shock would kill him. So much he had learned from Dr. Mortimer. He had heard also that Sir Charles was superstitious and had taken this grim legend very seriously. His ingenious mind instantly suggested a way by which the baronet could be done to death, and yet it would be hardly possible to bring home the guilt to the real murderer.<br/>“Having conceived the idea, he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. He had already on his insect hunts learned to penetrate the Grimpen Mire, and so had found a safe hiding-place for the creature. Here he kenneled it and waited his chance.<br/>“But it was some time coming. The old gentleman could not be decoyed outside of his grounds at night. Several times Stapleton lurked about with his hound, but without avail. It was during these fruitless quests that he, or rather his ally, was seen by peasants, and that the legend of the demon dog received a new confirmation. He had hoped that his wife might lure Sir Charles to his ruin, but here she proved unexpectedly independent. She would not endeavour to entangle the old gentleman in a sentimental attachment which might deliver him over to his enemy. Threats and even, I am sorry to say, blows refused to move her. She would have nothing to do with it, and for a time Stapleton was at a deadlock.<br/>“He found a way out of his difficulties through the chance that Sir Charles, who had conceived a friendship for him, made him the minister of his charity in the case of this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Laura Lyons. By representing himself as a single man he acquired complete influence over her, and he gave her to understand that in the event of her obtaining a divorce from her husband he would marry her. His plans were suddenly brought to a head by his knowledge that Sir Charles was about to leave the Hall on the advice of Dr. Mortimer, with whose opinion he himself pretended to coincide. He must act at once, or his victim might get beyond his power. He therefore put pressure upon Mrs. Lyons to write this letter, imploring the old man to give her an interview on the evening before his departure for London. He then, by a specious argument, prevented her from going, and so had the chance for which he had waited.<br/>“Driving back in the evening from Coombe Tracey he was in time to get his hound, to treat it with his infernal paint, and to bring the beast round to the gate at which he had reason to expect that he would find the old gentleman waiting. The dog, incited by its master, sprang over the wicket-gate and pursued the unfortunate baronet, who fled screaming down the yew alley. In that gloomy tunnel it must indeed have been a dreadful sight to see that huge black creature, with its flaming jaws and blazing eyes, bounding after its victim. He fell dead at the end of the alley from heart disease and terror. The hound had kept upon the grassy border while the baronet had run down the path, so that no track but the man’s was visible. On seeing him lying still the creature had probably approached to sniff at him, but finding him dead had turned away again. It was then that it left the print which was actually observed by Dr. Mortimer. The hound was called off and hurried away to its lair in the Grimpen Mire, and a mystery was left which puzzled the authorities, alarmed the countryside, and finally brought the case within the scope of our observation.<br/>“So much for the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. You perceive the devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women concerned in the case, Mrs. Stapleton and Mrs. Laura Lyons, were left with a strong suspicion against Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton knew that he had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound. Mrs. Lyons knew neither of these things, but had been impressed by the death occurring at the time of an uncancelled appointment which was only known to him. However, both of them were under his influence, and he had nothing to fear from them. The first half of his task was successfully accomplished but the more difficult still remained.<br/>“It is possible that Stapleton did not know of the existence of an heir in Canada. In any case he would very soon learn it from his friend Dr. Mortimer, and he was told by the latter all details about the arrival of Henry Baskerville. Stapleton’s first idea was that this young stranger from Canada might possibly be done to death in London without coming down to Devonshire at all. He distrusted his wife ever since she had refused to help him in laying a trap for the old man, and he dared not leave her long out of his sight for fear he should lose his influence over her. It was for this reason that he took her to London with him. They lodged, I find, at the Mexborough Private Hotel, in Craven Street, which was actually one of those called upon by my agent in search of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Mortimer to Baker Street and afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband—a fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment—that she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into Stapleton’s hands her own life would not be safe. Eventually, as we know, she adopted the expedient of cutting out the words which would form the message, and addressing the letter in a disguised hand. It reached the baronet, and gave him the first warning of his danger.<br/>“It was very essential for Stapleton to get some article of Sir Henry’s attire so that, in case he was driven to use the dog, he might always have the means of setting him upon his track. With characteristic promptness and audacity, he set about this at once, and we cannot doubt that the boots or chamber-maid of the hotel was well bribed to help him in his design. By chance, however, the first boot which was procured for him was a new one and, therefore, useless for his purpose. He then had it returned and obtained another—a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.<br/>“Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always by Stapleton in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Stapleton’s career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistoling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Stapleton recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man.<br/>“We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival of the baronet.”<br/>“One moment!” said I. “You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?”<br/>“I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of importance. There can be no question that Stapleton had a confidant, though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Stapletons can be traced for several years, as far back as the school-mastering days, so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England, while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The man, like Mrs. Stapleton herself, spoke good English, but with a curious lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen Mire by the path which Stapleton had marked out. It is very probable, therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast was used.<br/>“The Stapletons then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon followed by Sir Henry and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined the paper upon which the printed words were fastened, I made a close inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Stapletons. Thus, I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before ever we went to the west country.<br/>“It was my game to watch Stapleton. It was evident, however, that I could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action, so I am not so foolish as your wife thought. Cartwright had come down with me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was watching Stapleton, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I was able to keep my hand upon all the strings.<br/>“I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece of biography of Stapleton’s. I was able to establish the identity of the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped convict and the relations between him and the Barrymores. This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations.<br/>“By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to a jury. Even Stapleton’s attempt upon Sir Henry that night which ended in the death of the unfortunate convict did not help us much in proving murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Henry, alone and apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and driving Stapleton to his destruction. That Sir Henry should have been exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Mortimer assure me will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings. His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her.<br/>“It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout. There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Henry so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy, he made it certain that Sir Henry would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet’s death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. I do hope she and Sir Henry reconcile,” he said in a tone that sounded both hopeful and bitter, “And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained.”<br/>“He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound.”<br/>“The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance which might be offered.”<br/>“No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Stapleton came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?”<br/>“It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all, or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for Les Huguenots. Have you heard the De Reszkes? Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini’s for a little dinner on the way?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The next mystery is the Adventure of Wisteria Lodge</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I had thought my days writing about the mysterious and the grotesque ended after I had finished the story that ended in the death of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes. Yet here I am once again. It was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892. My wife’s friend Molly Hope had come to stay with us to assist in the forthcoming arrival of a new Watson. It was just after lunch and we sat together, each lost in our own thoughts.<br/>
"How do you define the word 'grotesque'?" Molly’s question interrupted the companionable silence.<br/>
"Strange--remarkable," I suggested.<br/>
"There is surely something more than that," said she; "some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. In your narratives you can see how often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal. Think of that affair with the red-headed men. That was grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which led straight to a murderous conspiracy."<br/>
Before I could ask why Molly was contemplating such things, Enola Holmes, sister to Mycroft and the late Sherlock, burst into my home and said, in lieu of a proper greeting, “I have received a telegram!”<br/>
“Was it meant for me and sent to you by mistake?”<br/>
“No, it is a client. A client I cannot help as I am occupied with the infernal Colonel Carruthers!”<br/>
“What! You wish to foist your client unto me?”<br/>
“What, do you wish to waste all you’ve learned working with my brother? If you are busy with your practice, perhaps Miss Hope could take it on?”<br/>
I did not even have to look at Molly’s eager face to know that she would accept. "Give it here?" I held out my hand for the telegram, which Miss Holmes handed to me. I read the telegram aloud.<br/>
"Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult you?<br/>
"Scott Eccles,<br/>
"Post Office, Charing Cross."<br/>
“Perhaps you will get your answer about the definition of grotesque,” my wife said to her friend.<br/>
I answered the telegram and the client came by later that day, a stout, tall, gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person. His life history was written in his heavy features and pompous manner. From his spats to his gold-rimmed spectacles he was a Conservative, a churchman, a good citizen, orthodox and conventional to the last degree. But some amazing experience had disturbed his native composure and left its traces in his bristling hair, his flushed, angry cheeks, and his flurried, excited manner. He plunged instantly into his business.<br/>
"I have had a most singular and unpleasant experience, Dr. Watson," said he. "Never in my life have I been placed in such a situation. It is most improper--most outrageous. I must insist upon some explanation." He swelled and puffed in his anger.<br/>
"Pray sit down, Mr. Scott Eccles," I soothed. "May I ask, in the first place, why you sought out Miss Enola Holmes?"<br/>
"Well, sir, it did not appear to be a matter which concerned the police, and yet, when you have heard the facts, you must admit that I could not leave it where it was. Private detectives are a class with whom I have absolutely no sympathy, but none the less--"<br/>
"Sir, please arrange your thoughts and let me know, in their due sequence, exactly what those events are which have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt, with dress boots and waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of advice and assistance."<br/>
The client looked down with a rueful face at his own unconventional appearance.<br/>
"I'm sure it must look very bad, Dr. Watson, and I am not aware that in my whole life such a thing has ever happened before. But I will tell you the whole queer business, and when I have done so you will admit, I am sure, that there has been enough to excuse me."<br/>
But his narrative was nipped in the bud. There was a bustle outside, and the maid opened the door to usher in two robust and official-looking individuals, one of whom was Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard, an energetic, gallant, and, within his limitations, a capable officer. He shook my hand and introduced his comrade as Inspector Baynes, of the Surrey Constabulary.<br/>
"We are hunting together, Dr. Watson, and our trail lay in this direction." He turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor. "Are you Mr. John Scott Eccles, of Popham House, Lee?"<br/>
"I am."<br/>
"We have been following you about all the morning."<br/>
"You traced him through the telegram, no doubt," said Molly.<br/>
"Exactly, Mr. Holmes. We picked up the scent at Charing Cross Post-Office and came on here."<br/>
"But why do you follow me? What do you want?"<br/>
"We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which led up to the death last night of Mr. Aloysius Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, near Esher."<br/>
Our client had sat up with staring eyes and every tinge of colour struck from his astonished face.<br/>
"Dead? Did you say he was dead?"<br/>
"Yes, sir, he is dead."<br/>
"But how? An accident?"<br/>
"Murder, if ever there was one upon earth."<br/>
"Good God! This is awful! You don't mean--you don't mean that I am suspected?"<br/>
"A letter of yours was found in the dead man's pocket, and we know by it that you had planned to pass last night at his house."<br/>
"So, I did."<br/>
"Oh, you did, did you?"<br/>
Out came the official notebook.<br/>
"Wait a bit, Gregson," I said. "All you desire is a plain statement, is it not?"<br/>
"And it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eccles that it may be used against him."<br/>
"Mr. Eccles was going to tell us about it when you entered the room. I think, Mary, darling, a brandy and soda would do him no harm. Now, sir, I suggest that you take no notice of this addition to your audience, and that you proceed with your narrative exactly as you would have done had you never been interrupted."<br/>
The visitor had gulped off the brandy and the colour had returned to his face. With a dubious glance at the inspector's notebook, he plunged at once into his extraordinary statement.<br/>
"I am a bachelor," said he, "and being of a sociable turn I cultivate a large number of friends. Among these are the family of a retired brewer called Melville, living at Abermarle Mansion, Kensington. It was at his table that I met some weeks ago a young fellow named Garcia. He was, I understood, of Spanish descent and connected in some way with the embassy. He spoke perfect English, was pleasing in his manners, and as good-looking a man as ever I saw in my life.<br/>
"In some way we struck up quite a friendship, this young fellow and I. He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee. One thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge, between Esher and Oxshott. Yesterday evening I went to Esher to fulfil this engagement.<br/>
"He had described his household to me before I went there. He lived with a faithful servant, a countryman of his own, who looked after all his needs. This fellow could speak English and did his housekeeping for him. Then there was a wonderful cook, he said, a half-breed whom he had picked up in his travels, who could serve an excellent dinner. I remember that he remarked what a queer household it was to find in the heart of Surrey, and that I agreed with him, though it has proved a good deal queerer than I thought.<br/>
"I drove to the place--about two miles on the south side of Esher. The house was a fair-sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving drive which was banked with high evergreen shrubs. It was an old, tumbledown building in a crazy state of disrepair. When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly. He opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great show of cordiality. I was handed over to the manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him. He continually drummed his fingers on the table, gnawed his nails, and gave other signs of nervous impatience. The dinner itself was neither well served nor well cooked, and the gloomy presence of the taciturn servant did not help to enliven us. I can assure you that many times in the course of the evening I wished that I could invent some excuse which would take me back to Lee.<br/>
"One thing comes back to my memory which may have a bearing upon the business that you two gentlemen are investigating. I thought nothing of it at the time. Near the end of dinner, a note was handed in by the servant. I noticed that after my host had read it, he seemed even more distrait and strange than before. He gave up all pretence at conversation and sat, smoking endless cigarettes, lost in his own thoughts, but he made no remark as to the contents. About eleven I was glad to go to bed. Sometime later Garcia looked in at my door--the room was dark at the time--and asked me if I had rung. I said that I had not. He apologized for having disturbed me so late, saying that it was nearly one o'clock. I dropped off after this and slept soundly all night.<br/>
"And now I come to the amazing part of my tale. When I woke it was broad daylight. I glanced at my watch, and the time was nearly nine. I had particularly asked to be called at eight, so I was very much astonished at this forgetfulness. I sprang up and rang for the servant. There was no response. I rang again and again, with the same result. Then I came to the conclusion that the bell was out of order. I huddled on my clothes and hurried downstairs in an exceedingly bad temper to order some hot water. You can imagine my surprise when I found that there was no one there. I shouted in the hall. There was no answer. Then I ran from room to room. All were deserted. My host had shown me which was his bedroom the night before, so I knocked at the door. No reply. I turned the handle and walked in. The room was empty, and the bed had never been slept in. He had gone with the rest. The foreign host, the foreign footman, the foreign cook, all had vanished in the night! That was the end of my visit to Wisteria Lodge."<br/>
Molly’s eyes shone at the tale of this bizarre incident.<br/>
"Your experience is, so far as I know, perfectly unique," I said. "May I ask, sir, what you did then?"<br/>
"I was furious. My first idea was that I had been the victim of some absurd practical joke. I packed my things, banged the hall door behind me, and set off for Esher, with my bag in my hand. I called at Allan Brothers', the chief land agents in the village, and found that it was from this firm that the villa had been rented. It struck me that the whole proceeding could hardly be for the purpose of making a fool of me, and that the main object must be to get out of the rent. It is late in March, so quarter-day is at hand. But this theory would not work. The agent was obliged to me for my warning, but told me that the rent had been paid in advance. Then I made my way to town and called at the Spanish embassy. The man was unknown there. After this I went to see Melville, at whose house I had first met Garcia, but I found that he really knew rather less about him than I did. Finally, when I got your reply to my wire, I came out to you, since I gather that you are a person who gives advice in difficult cases. But now, Mr. Inspector, I understand, from what you said when you entered the room, that you can carry the story on, and that some tragedy had occurred. I can assure you that every word I have said is the truth, and that, outside of what I have told you, I know absolutely nothing about the fate of this man. My only desire is to help the law in every possible way."<br/>
"I am sure of it, Mr. Scott Eccles--I am sure of it," said Inspector Gregson in a very amiable tone. "I am bound to say that everything which you have said agrees very closely with the facts as they have come to our notice. For example, there was that note which arrived during dinner. Did you chance to observe what became of it?"<br/>
"Yes, I did. Garcia rolled it up and threw it into the fire."<br/>
"What do you say to that, Mr. Baynes?"<br/>
The country detective was a stout, puffy, red man, whose face was only redeemed from grossness by two extraordinarily bright eyes, almost hidden behind the heavy creases of cheek and brow. With a slow smile he drew a folded and discoloured scrap of paper from his pocket.<br/>
"It was a dog-grate, and he overpitched it. I picked this out unburned from the back of it."<br/>
I smiled in appreciation, "You must have examined the house very carefully to find a single pellet of paper."<br/>
"I did. It's my way. Shall I read it, Mr. Gregson?"<br/>
The Londoner nodded.<br/>
"The note is written upon ordinary cream-laid paper without watermark. It is a quarter-sheet. The paper is cut off in two snips with a short-bladed scissors. It has been folded over three times and sealed with purple wax, put on hurriedly and pressed down with some flat oval object. It is addressed to Mr. Garcia, Wisteria Lodge. It says:<br/>
"Our own colours, green and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize. Godspeed. D.<br/>
"It is a woman's writing, done with a sharp-pointed pen, but the address is either done with another pen or by someone else. It is thicker and bolder, as you see."<br/>
"A very remarkable note," I said, glancing it over. "I must compliment you, Mr. Baynes, upon your attention to detail in your examination of it. A few trifling points might perhaps be added. The oval seal is undoubtedly a plain sleeve-link--what else is of such a shape? The scissors were bent nail scissors. Short as the two snips are, you can distinctly see the same slight curve in each."<br/>
The country detective chuckled.<br/>
"I thought I had squeezed all the juice out of it, but I see there was a little over," he said. "I'm bound to say that I make nothing of the note except that there was something on hand, and that a woman, as usual was at the bottom of it."<br/>
Mr. Scott Eccles had fidgeted in his seat during this conversation.<br/>
"I am glad you found the note, since it corroborates my story," said he. "But I beg to point out that I have not yet heard what has happened to Mr. Garcia, nor what has become of his household."<br/>
"As to Garcia," said Gregson, "that is easily answered. He was found dead this morning upon Oxshott Common, nearly a mile from his home. His head had been smashed to pulp by heavy blows of a sandbag or some such instrument, which had crushed rather than wounded. It is a lonely corner, and there is no house within a quarter of a mile of the spot. He had apparently been struck down first from behind, but his assailant had gone on beating him long after he was dead. It was a most furious assault. There are no footsteps nor any clue to the criminals."<br/>
"Robbed?"<br/>
"No, there was no attempt at robbery."<br/>
"This is very painful--very painful and terrible," said Mr. Scott Eccles in a querulous voice, "but it is really uncommonly hard on me. I had nothing to do with my host going off upon a nocturnal excursion and meeting so sad an end. How do I come to be mixed up with the case?"<br/>
"Very simply, sir," Inspector Baynes answered. "The only document found in the pocket of the deceased was a letter from you saying that you would be with him on the night of his death. It was the envelope of this letter which gave us the dead man's name and address. It was after nine this morning when we reached his house and found neither you nor anyone else inside it. I wired to Mr. Gregson to run you down in London while I examined Wisteria Lodge. Then I came into town, joined Mr. Gregson, and here we are."<br/>
"I think now," said Gregson, rising, "we had best put this matter into an official shape. You will come round with us to the station, Mr. Scott Eccles, and let us have your statement in writing."<br/>
"Certainly, I will come at once. But I retain your services, Dr. Watson. I desire you to spare no expense and no pains to get at the truth."<br/>
I turned to the country inspector.<br/>
"I suppose that you have no objection to my collaborating with you, Mr. Baynes?"<br/>
"Highly honoured, sir, I am sure."<br/>
"You appear to have been very prompt and businesslike in all that you have done. Was there any clue, may I ask, as to the exact hour that the man met his death?"<br/>
"He had been there since one o'clock. There was rain about that time, and his death had certainly been before the rain."<br/>
"But that is perfectly impossible, Mr. Baynes," cried our client. "His voice is unmistakable. I could swear to it that it was he who addressed me in my bedroom at that very hour."<br/>
"Remarkable, but by no means impossible," I said.<br/>
"You have a clue?" asked Gregson.<br/>
"On the face of it the case is not a very complex one, though it certainly presents some novel and interesting features. A further knowledge of facts is necessary before I would venture to give a final and definite opinion. By the way, Mr. Baynes, did you find anything remarkable besides this note in your examination of the house?"<br/>
The detective looked at my friend in a singular way.<br/>
"There were," said he, "one or two _very_ remarkable things. Perhaps when I have finished at the police-station you would care to come out and give me your opinion of them."<br/>
"I am entirely at your service," I said. After that all the gentleman left.<br/>
"Well, Watson," Molly asked, "what do you make of it?"<br/>
"I can make nothing of this mystification of Scott Eccles."<br/>
"You said the case was simple?"<br/>
"I lied. Well, taken with the disappearance of the man's companions, I should say that they were in some way concerned in the murder and had fled from justice."<br/>
"That is certainly a possible point of view. On the face of it you must admit, however, that it is very strange that his two servants should have been in a conspiracy against him and should have attacked him on the one night when he had a guest. They had him alone at their mercy every other night in the week."<br/>
"Then why did they fly?"<br/>
"I don’t know, but surely the coaxing of Scott Eccles to Wisteria Lodge had some connection with the events."<br/>
"But what possible connection?"<br/>
"Well,” said Mary, “Let us take it link by link. There is something unnatural about this strange and sudden friendship between the young Spaniard and Scott Eccles. It was the former who forced the pace. He called upon Eccles at the other end of London on the very day after he first met him, and he kept in close touch with him until he got him down to Esher. Now, what did he want with Eccles? What could Eccles supply? I see no charm in the man. He is not particularly intelligent--not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin. Why, then, was he picked out from all the other people whom Garcia met as particularly suited to his purpose? Has he any one outstanding quality?”<br/>
A thought occurred to me, “I say that he has. He is the very type of conventional British respectability, and the very man as a witness to impress another Briton. You saw yourselves how neither of the inspectors dreamed of questioning his statement, extraordinary as it was."<br/>
"But what was he to witness?"<br/>
"Nothing, as things turned out, but everything had they gone another way. That is how I read the matter."<br/>
"I see, he might have proved an alibi."<br/>
"Exactly. Suppose, for argument's sake, that the household of Wisteria Lodge are confederates in some design. The attempt, whatever it may be, is to come off, we will say, before one o'clock. By some juggling of the clocks it is quite possible that they may have got Scott Eccles to bed earlier than he thought, but in any case, it is likely that when Garcia went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was really not more than twelve. If Garcia could do whatever he had to do and be back by the hour mentioned he had evidently a powerful reply to any accusation. Here was this irreproachable Englishman ready to swear in any court of law that the accused was in the house all the time. It was an insurance against the worst."<br/>
"Yes, yes, I see that. But how about the disappearance of the others?"<br/>
"I do not know."<br/>
"And the message?" wondered Molly, “How did it run? 'Our own colours, green and white.' Sounds like racing. 'Green open, white shut.' That could be a signal. 'Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.' This is an assignation. Hmmmm. We may find a jealous husband at the bottom of it all. It was clearly a dangerous quest. She would not have said 'Godspeed' had it not been so. 'D'--that should be a guide."<br/>
"The man was a Spaniard. I suggest that 'D' stands for Dolores, a common female name in Spain."<br/>
"Why would a Spaniard would write to a Spaniard in English?"<br/>
The three of us discussed more theories, and I had the maid deliver a telegram. An answer had arrived to my telegram before our Surrey officer had returned. I read it, the telegram was a list of names and addresses:<br/>
Lord Harringby, The Dingle; Sir George Ffolliott, Oxshott Towers; Mr. Hynes Hynes, J.P., Purdley Place; Mr. James Baker Williams, Forton Old Hall; Mr. Henderson, High Gable; Rev. Joshua Stone, Nether Walsling.<br/>
"This is a very obvious way of limiting our field of operations," I said. "No doubt Baynes, with his methodical mind, has already adopted some similar plan."<br/>
"I don't quite understand," asked Mary<br/>
"Well, we arrived at the conclusion that the message received by Garcia at dinner was an appointment or an assignation. In order to keep the tryst, one has to ascend a main stair and seek the seventh door in a corridor, so the house must be a very large one. And this house cannot be more than a mile or two from Oxshott, since Garcia was walking in that direction and hoped, to be back in Wisteria Lodge in time to avail himself of an alibi, which would only be valid up to one o'clock. As the number of large houses close to Oxshott must be limited, I sent to the agents mentioned by Scott Eccles to obtain a list of them."<br/>
It was nearly six o'clock before Molly and I found ourselves in the pretty Surrey village of Esher, with Inspector Baynes as our companion. Both Molly and Mary insisted that she come along, assuring that Mary would be fine on her own for a while.<br/>
Holmes and I had taken things for the night, and found comfortable quarters at the Bull. Finally, we set out in the company of the detective on our visit to Wisteria Lodge. At first, he protested at Molly’s presence, but then was informed that Scott Eccles first sought out Enola Holmes, so a lady detective was inevitable. It was a cold, dark March evening, with a sharp wind and a fine rain beating upon our faces, a fit setting for the wild common over which our road passed and the tragic goal to which it led us.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If you are wondering at the time jump, remember that the mysteries are written from Watson's perspective and are limited to the information he is privy to. Some version of the "what do you need" scene absolutely happened, Watson just doesn't know about it. Also, it was very fun to utilize the continuity error of a Sherlock Holmes mystery taking place during his disappearance to give the other characters a chance to shine. I liked how I was able to turn a scene of Sherlock knowing everything and Watson nothing into a scene where many people were able to contribute.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. The Tiger of San Pedro</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A cold and melancholy walk of a couple of miles brought us to a high wooden gate, which opened into a gloomy avenue of chestnuts. The curved and shadowed drive led us to a low, dark house, pitch-black against a slate-coloured sky. From the front window upon the left of the door there peeped a glimmer of a feeble light.<br/>"There's a constable in possession," said Baynes. "I'll knock at the window." He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on the pane. Through the fogged glass I dimly saw a man spring up from a chair beside the fire, and heard a sharp cry from within the room. An instant later a white-faced, hard-breathing policeman had opened the door, the candle wavering in his trembling hand.<br/>"What's the matter, Walters?" asked Baynes sharply.<br/>The man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and gave a long sigh of relief.<br/>"I am glad you have come, sir. It has been a long evening, and I don't think my nerve is as good as it was."<br/>"Your nerve, Walters? I should not have thought you had a nerve in your body."<br/>"Well, sir, it's this lonely, silent house and the queer thing in the kitchen. Then when you tapped at the window, I thought it had come again."<br/>"That what had come again?"<br/>"The devil, sir, for all I know. It was at the window."<br/>"What was at the window, and when?"<br/>"It was just about two hours ago. The light was just fading. I was sitting reading in the chair. I don't know what made me look up, but there was a face looking in at me through the lower pane. Lord, sir, what a face it was! I'll see it in my dreams."<br/>"Tut, tut, Walters. This is not talk for a police-constable."<br/>"I know, sir, I know; but it shook me, sir, and there's no use to deny it. It wasn't black, sir, nor was it white, nor any colour that I know but a kind of queer shade like clay with a splash of milk in it. Then there was the size of it--it was twice yours, sir. And the look of it--the great staring goggle eyes, and the line of white teeth like a hungry beast. I tell you, sir, I couldn't move a finger, nor get my breath, till it whisked away and was gone. Out I ran and through the shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there."<br/>"If I didn't know you were a good man, Walters, I should put a black mark against you for this. If it were the devil himself a constable on duty should never thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him. I suppose the whole thing is not a vision and a touch of nerves?"<br/>"That, at least, is very easily settled," I said, lighting his little pocket lantern. "Yes," I reported, after a short examination of the grass bed, "a number twelve shoe, I should say. If he was all on the same scale as his foot, he must certainly have been a giant."<br/>"What became of him?"<br/>"He seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road."<br/>"Well," said the inspector with a grave and thoughtful face, "whoever he may have been, and whatever he may have wanted, he's gone for the present, and we have more immediate things to attend to. Now, Mr. Holmes, with your permission, I will show you round the house."<br/>The various bedrooms and sitting-rooms had yielded nothing to a careful search. Apparently, the tenants had brought little or nothing with them, and all the furniture down to the smallest details had been taken over with the house. A good deal of clothing with the stamp of Marx and Co., High Holborn, had been left behind. Telegraphic inquiries had been already made which showed that Marx knew nothing of his customer save that he was a good payer. Odds and ends, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire revolver, and a guitar were among the personal property.<br/>"Nothing in all this," said Baynes, stalking, candle in hand, from room to room. "But now, Dr. Watson, I invite your attention to the kitchen."<br/>It was a gloomy, high-ceilinged room at the back of the house, with a straw litter in one corner, which served apparently as a bed for the cook. The table was piled with half-eaten dishes and dirty plates, the debris of last night's dinner.<br/>"Look at this," said Baynes. "What do you make of it?"<br/>He held up his candle before an extraordinary object which stood at the back of the dresser. It was so wrinkled and shrunken and withered that it was difficult to say what it might have been. One could but say that it was black and leathery and that it bore some resemblance to a dwarfish, human figure. At first, as I examined it, I thought that it was a mummified negro baby, and then it seemed a very twisted and ancient monkey. Finally, I was left in doubt as to whether it was animal or human. A double band of white shells were strung round the centre of it.<br/>"Very interesting--very interesting, indeed!" said Molly, peering at this sinister relic. "Anything more?"<br/>In silence Baynes led the way to the sink and held forward his candle. The limbs and body of some large, white bird, torn savagely to pieces with the feathers still on, were littered all over it. Molly pointed to the wattles on the severed head.<br/>"A white cock," said she. "Most interesting! It is really a very curious case."<br/>But Mr. Baynes had kept his most sinister exhibit to the last. From under the sink he drew a zinc pail which contained a quantity of blood. Then from the table he took a platter heaped with small pieces of charred bone.<br/>"Something has been killed and something has been burned. We raked all these out of the fire. We had a doctor in this morning. He says that they are not human."<br/>"I must congratulate you, Inspector, on handling so distinctive and instructive a case. Your powers, if I may say so without offence, seem superior to your opportunities."<br/>Inspector Baynes's small eyes twinkled with pleasure.<br/>"You're right, Dr. Watson. We stagnate in the provinces. A case of this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it. What do you make of these bones?"<br/>"A lamb, I should say, or a kid."<br/>"And the white cock?"<br/>"Curious, Mr. Baynes, very curious. I should say almost unique."<br/>"Yes, sir, there must have been some very strange people with some very strange ways in this house. One of them is dead. Did his companions follow him and kill him? If they did, we should have them, for every port is watched. But my own views are different. Yes, sir, my own views are very different."<br/>"You have a theory then?"<br/>"And I'll work it myself, Dr. Watson. It's only due to my own credit to do so. Your name is made, but I have still to make mine. I should be glad to be able to say afterwards that I had solved it without your help."<br/>I laughed good-humoredly.<br/>"Well, well, Inspector," I said. "Do you follow your path and I will follow mine. My results are always very much at your service if you care to apply to me for them. I think that I have seen all that I wish in this house, and that my time may be more profitably employed elsewhere. Au revoir and good luck!"<br/>The game was afoot.<br/>Molly and I spent some days in the country, chatting with a number of village gossips whose acquaintance we had cultivated, although we did return to town one day to check on Mary and visit the British Museum. Occasionally in our rambles we came across Inspector Baynes. His fat, red face wreathed itself in smiles and his small eyes glittered as he greeted us. He said little about the case, but from that little we gathered that he also was not dissatisfied at the course of events. I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when, some five days after the crime, I opened my morning paper to find in large letters:<br/>         THE OXSHOTT MYSTERY<br/>         A SOLUTION<br/>         ARREST OF SUPPOSED ASSASSIN<br/>"By Jove!" I cried. "Baynes has got him!"<br/>But the report read as follows:<br/>"Great excitement was caused in Esher and the neighbouring district when it was learned late last night that an arrest had been effected in connection with the Oxshott murder. It will be remembered that Mr. Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on Oxshott Common, his body showing signs of extreme violence, and that on the same night his servant and his cook fled, which appeared to show their participation in the crime. It was suggested, but never proved, that the deceased gentleman may have had valuables in the house, and that their abstraction was the motive of the crime. Every effort was made by Inspector Baynes, who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding place of the fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they had not gone far but were lurking in some retreat which had been already prepared. It was certain from the first, however, that they would eventually be detected, as the cook, from the evidence of one or two tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of him through the window, was a man of most remarkable appearance--being a huge and hideous mulatto, with yellowish features of a pronounced negroid type. This man has been seen since the crime, for he was detected and pursued by Constable Walters on the same evening, when he had the audacity to revisit Wisteria Lodge. Inspector Baynes, considering that such a visit must have some purpose in view and was likely, therefore, to be repeated, abandoned the house but left an ambuscade in the shrubbery. The man walked into the trap and was captured last night after a struggle in which Constable Downing was badly bitten by the savage. We understand that when the prisoner is brought before the magistrates a remand will be applied for by the police, and that great developments are hoped from his capture."<br/>"Really we must see Baynes at once," cried Molly. "We will just catch him before he starts." We hurried down the village street and found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just leaving his lodgings.<br/>"You've seen the paper, Dr. Watson?" he asked, holding one out to us.<br/>"Yes, Baynes, I've seen it. Pray don't think it a liberty if I give you a word of friendly warning."<br/>"Of warning, Dr. Watson?"<br/>"I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not convinced that you are on the right lines. I don't want you to commit yourself too far unless you are sure."<br/>"You're very kind, Dr. Watson."<br/>"I assure you I speak for your good."<br/>It seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an instant over one of Mr. Baynes's tiny eyes.<br/>"We agreed to work on our own lines, Dr. Watson. That's what I am doing."<br/>"Oh, very good," I said. "Don't blame me."<br/>"No, sir; I believe you mean well by me. But we all have our own systems, Mr. Holmes. You have yours, and maybe I have mine."<br/>"Let us say no more about it."<br/>"You're welcome always to my news. This fellow is a perfect savage, as strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil. He chewed Downing's thumb nearly off before they could master him. He hardly speaks a word of English, and we can get nothing out of him but grunts."<br/>"And you think you have evidence that he murdered his late master?"<br/>"I didn't say so, Dr. Watson; I didn't say so. We all have our little ways. You try yours and I will try mine. That's the agreement."<br/>Molly and I returned to our lodgings to talk over, once again, our theories. Garcia had arranged for the presence of Scott Eccles, which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi. It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and apparently a criminal enterprise, in hand that night in the course of which he met his death. Only a man with a criminal enterprise desires to establish an alibi. Who, then, is most likely to have taken his life? Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was directed. This is the reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household. They were all confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the Englishman's evidence, and all would be well. But the attempt was a dangerous one, and if Garcia did not return by a certain hour it was probable that his own life had been sacrificed. It had been arranged, therefore, that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for some prearranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a position afterwards to renew their attempt.<br/>"But why should one servant return?" Molly rubbed the ring that hung on a chain round her neck. I noticed her habit to do this while thoughtful or nervous while working on this case with her. She had been doing this for some months, but I couldn’t remember when it had started. The ring was in the shape of a snake with inlaid bloodstone, Molly’s birthstone.<br/>"We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious, something which he could not bear to part with, had been left behind. That would explain his persistence, would it not?" I said. Now, the next step was the note received by Garcia at the dinner that indicates a confederate at the other end. We had decided that it could only lie in some large house, and that the number of large houses is limited. We had already made a reconnaissance of all the large houses and an examination of the family history of the occupants. Our attention is on the famous old Jacobean grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott, and less than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy. The other mansions belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far aloof from romance. But Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all accounts a curious man to whom curious adventures might befall.<br/>"A singular set of people, Watson--the man himself the most singular of them all,” Molly said. Mr. Henderson was a man of fifty, strong, active, with iron-gray hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of an emperor--a fierce, masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his parchment face. He was either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics, for he was yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord. His friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, was undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate brown, wily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness of speech. Two sets of foreigners, one at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable.<br/>These two men, close and confidential friends, were the centre of the household; but there was one other person who for our immediate purpose may be even more important. Henderson had two children--girls of eleven and thirteen. Their governess was a Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman of forty or thereabouts. There was also one confidential manservant. This little group formed the real family, for they traveled about together, and Henderson was a great traveler, always on the move. It was only within the last weeks that he had returned, after a year's absence, to High Gable. I may add that he was enormously rich, and whatever his whims may be he could very easily satisfy them. For the rest, his house was full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the usual overfed, underworked staff of a large English country house. So much we learned partly from village gossip and partly from our own observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck, but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it. As Baynes remarked, we all have our systems. It was my system which enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of High Gable, sacked in a moment of temper by his imperious employer. He in turn had friends among the indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their master. So, I had my key to the secrets of the establishment. I was a double-winged house, and the servants lived on one side, the family on the other. There's no link between the two save for Henderson's own servant, who served the family's meals. Everything was carried to a certain door, which formed the one connection. Governess and children hardly went out at all, except into the garden. Henderson never by any chance walked alone. His dark secretary was like his shadow. The gossip among the servants was that their master was terribly afraid of something. 'Sold his soul to the devil in exchange for money,' said Warner, 'and expects his creditor to come up and claim his own.' Where they came from, or who they are, nobody had an idea. They were very violent. Twice Henderson had lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy compensation had kept him out of the courts.<br/>"Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information,” said Molly, “We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel, and it was a woman. Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our reasoning seems to point that way. At any rate, we may take it as a hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail. I may add that Miss Burnet's age and character make it certain that the idea that there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.”<br/>I continued, "If she wrote the note, she was presumably the friend and confederate of Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of his death? If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be sealed. Still, in her heart, she must retain bitterness and hatred against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as she could to have revenge upon them. But now we come to a sinister fact. Miss Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night of the murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she alive? Has she perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend whom she had summoned? Or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point which we still have to decide. There is nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant. Our whole scheme might seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate. The woman's disappearance counts for nothing, since in that extraordinary household any member of it might be invisible for a week. And yet she may at the present moment be in danger of her life. All I can do is to watch the house and leave my agent, Warner, on guard at the gates. We can't let such a situation continue. If the law can do nothing, I must take the risk myself."<br/>"What do you suggest we do?" asked Molly pointedly.<br/>"I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an outhouse. I will go to-night and see if I can strike at the very heart of the mystery. The old house has an atmosphere of murder, singular and formidable inhabitants, and unknown dangers of the approach. Also, I would be putting myself legally in a false position.” But I should have known it would be impossible to convince Molly to shrink from any adventure when one knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found. The die was cast.<br/>Thankfully it was not destined that our investigation should have so adventurous an ending. It was about five o'clock, and the shadows of the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed into our room.<br/>"They've gone, Dr. Watson. They went by the last train. The lady broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs."<br/>"Excellent, Warner!" I cried, springing to my feet. <br/>In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent tragedy. Her head hung listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised it and turned her dull eyes upon us, I saw that her pupils were dark dots in the centre of the broad gray iris. She was drugged with opium.<br/>"I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Dr. Watson," said our emissary, the discharged gardener. "When the carriage came out, I followed it to the station. She was like one walking in her sleep, but when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. She fought her way out again. I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are. I shan't forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I'd have a short life if he had his way--the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil."<br/>Warner and I carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug. Baynes had been summoned by Molly, and the situation rapidly explained to him.<br/>"Why, you've got me the very evidence I want," said the inspector warmly, "I was on the same scent as you from the first."<br/>"What! You were after Henderson?"<br/>"Why, Dr. Watson, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable, I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below. It was just who would get his evidence first."<br/>"Then why did you arrest the mulatto?"<br/>Baynes chuckled.<br/>"I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected, and that he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to clear off then and give us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet."<br/>"You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and intuition," I said.<br/>Baynes flushed with pleasure.<br/>"I've had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week. Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight. But he must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet broke away. However, your man picked her up, and it all ends well. We can't arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get a statement the better."<br/>"Every minute she gets stronger," I said, glancing at the governess being tended to by Molly under my instruction. "But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?"<br/>"Henderson," the inspector answered, "is Don Murillo, once called the Tiger of San Pedro."<br/>The Tiger of San Pedro! The whole history of the man came back to me in a flash. He had made his name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to civilization. Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering people for ten or twelve years. His name was a terror through all Central America. At the end of that time there was a universal rising against him. But he was as cunning as he was cruel, and at the first whisper of coming trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship which was manned by devoted adherents. It was an empty palace which was stormed by the insurgents next day. The dictator, his two children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them. From that moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity had been a frequent subject for comment in the European press.<br/>"Yes, sir, Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro," said Baynes. "If you look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and white, same as in the note, Dr. Watson. Henderson, he called himself, but I traced him back, Paris and Rome and Madrid to Barcelona, where his ship came in in '86. They've been looking for him all the time for their revenge, but it is only now that they have begun to find him out."<br/>"They discovered him a year ago," said Miss Burnet, who had sat up and was now intently following the conversation. "Once already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him. Now, again, it is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the monster goes safe. But another will come, and yet another, until someday justice will be done; that is as certain as the rise of to-morrow's sun." Her thin hands clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her hatred.<br/>"But how come you into this matter, Miss Burnet?" Molly asked. "How can an English lady join in such a murderous affair?"<br/>"I join in it because there is no other way in the world by which justice can be gained. What does the law of England care for the rivers of blood shed years ago in San Pedro, or for the shipload of treasure which this man has stolen? To you they are like crimes committed in some other planet. But we know. We have learned the truth in sorrow and in suffering. To us there is no fiend in hell like Juan Murillo, and no peace in life while his victims still cry for vengeance."<br/>"No doubt," I said, "he was as you say. I have heard that he was atrocious. But how are you affected?"<br/>"I will tell you it all. This villain's policy was to murder, on one pretext or another, every man who showed such promise that he might in time come to be a dangerous rival. My husband--yes, my real name is Signora Victor Durando--was the San Pedro minister in London. He met me and married me there. A nobler man never lived upon earth. Unhappily, Murillo heard of his excellence, recalled him on some pretext, and had him shot. With a premonition of his fate he had refused to take me with him. His estates were confiscated, and I was left with a pittance and a broken heart.<br/>"Then came the downfall of the tyrant. He escaped as you have just described. But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose nearest and dearest had suffered torture and death at his hands, would not let the matter rest. They banded themselves into a society which should never be dissolved until the work was done. It was my part after we had discovered in the transformed Henderson the fallen despot, to attach myself to his household and keep the others in touch with his movements. This I was able to do by securing the position of governess in his family. He little knew that the woman who faced him at every meal was the woman whose husband he had hurried at an hour's notice into eternity. I smiled on him, did my duty to his children, and bided my time. An attempt was made in Paris and failed. We zig-zagged swiftly here and there over Europe to throw off the pursuers and finally returned to this house, which he had taken upon his first arrival in England.<br/>"But here also the ministers of justice were waiting. Knowing that he would return there, Garcia, who is the son of the former highest dignitary in San Pedro, was waiting with two trusty companions of humble station, all three fired with the same reasons for revenge. He could do little during the day, for Murillo took every precaution and never went out save with his satellite Lucas, or Lopez as he was known in the days of his greatness. At night, however, he slept alone, and the avenger might find him. On a certain evening, which had been prearranged, I sent my friend final instructions, for the man was forever on the alert and continually changed his room. I was to see that the doors were open and the signal of a green or white light in a window which faced the drive was to give notice if all was safe or if the attempt had better be postponed.<br/>"But everything went wrong with us. In some way I had excited the suspicion of Lopez, the secretary. He crept up behind me and sprang upon me just as I had finished the note. He and his master dragged me to my room and held judgment upon me as a convicted traitress. Then and there they would have plunged their knives into me could they have seen how to escape the consequences of the deed. Finally, after much debate, they concluded that my murder was too dangerous. But they determined to get rid forever of Garcia. They had gagged me, and Murillo twisted my arm round until I gave him the address. I swear that he might have twisted it off had I understood what it would mean to Garcia. Lopez addressed the note which I had written, sealed it with his sleeve-link, and sent it by the hand of the servant, Jose. How they murdered him I do not know, save that it was Murillo's hand who struck him down, for Lopez had remained to guard me. I believe he must have waited among the gorse bushes through which the path winds and struck him down as he passed. At first, they were of a mind to let him enter the house and to kill him as a detected burglar; but they argued that if they were mixed up in an inquiry their own identity would at once be publicly disclosed and they would be open to further attacks. With the death of Garcia, the pursuit might cease, since such a death might frighten others from the task.<br/>"All would now have been well for them had it not been for my knowledge of what they had done. I have no doubt that there were times when my life hung in the balance. I was confined to my room, terrorized by the most horrible threats, cruelly ill-used to break my spirit--see this stab on my shoulder and the bruises from end to end of my arms--and a gag was thrust into my mouth on the one occasion when I tried to call from the window. For five days this cruel imprisonment continued, with hardly enough food to hold body and soul together. This afternoon a good lunch was brought me, but the moment after I took it, I knew that I had been drugged. In a sort of dream, I remember being half-led, half-carried to the carriage; in the same state I was conveyed to the train. Only then, when the wheels were almost moving, did I suddenly realize that my liberty lay in my own hands. I sprang out, they tried to drag me back, and had it not been for the help of this good man, who led me to the cab, I should never had broken away. Now, thank God, I am beyond their power forever."<br/>We had all listened intently to this remarkable statement. It was Molly who broke the silence.<br/>"The difficulties are not over," she remarked, shaking his head. "The police work ends, but the legal work begins."<br/>"Exactly," said I. "A plausible lawyer could make it out as an act of self-defence. There may be a hundred crimes in the background, but it is only on this one that they can be tried."<br/>"Come, come," said Baynes cheerily, "I think better of the law than that. Self-defence is one thing. To entice a man in cold blood with the object of murdering him is another, whatever danger you may fear from him. No, no, we shall all be justified when we see the tenants of High Gable at the next Guildford Assizes."<br/>It is a matter of history, however, that a little time was still to elapse before the Tiger of San Pedro should meet with his deserts. Wily and bold, he and his companion threw their pursuer off their track by entering a lodging-house in Edmonton Street and leaving by the back-gate into Curzon Square. From that day they were seen no more in England. Some six months afterwards the Marquess of Montalva and Signor Rulli, his secretary, were both murdered in their rooms at the Hotel Escurial at Madrid. The crime was ascribed to Nihilism, and the murderers were never arrested. Inspector Baynes sent a printed description of the dark face of the secretary, and of the masterful features, the magnetic black eyes, and the tufted brows of his master. We could not doubt that justice, if belated, had come at last.<br/>"A chaotic case, my dear," said Mary, cooing over little Rosamunde. "It will not be possible for you to present in that compact form which is dear to your heart. It covers two continents, concerns two groups of mysterious persons, and is further complicated by the highly respectable presence of our friend, Scott Eccles, whose inclusion shows me that the deceased Garcia had a scheming mind and a well-developed instinct of self-preservation. It is remarkable only for the fact that amid a perfect jungle of possibilities you, with your worthy collaborator, the inspector, have kept your close hold on the essentials and so been guided along the crooked and winding path. But what was the object of the mulatto cook's return?"<br/>"I think that the strange creature in the kitchen may account for it. The man was a primitive savage from the backwoods of San Pedro, and that was his fetish. When his companion and he had fled to some prearranged retreat--already occupied, no doubt by a confederate--the companion had persuaded him to leave so compromising an article of furniture. But the mulatto's heart was with it, and he was driven back to it next day, when, on reconnoitering through the window, he found policeman Walters in possession. He waited three days longer, and then his piety or his superstition drove him to try once more. Inspector Baynes, who, with his usual astuteness, had minimized the incident before me, had really recognized its importance and had left a trap into which the creature walked. Any other point, my love?"<br/>"The torn bird, the pail of blood, the charred bones, all the mystery of that weird kitchen?"<br/>"Molly and I spent a morning in the British Museum reading up on that and other points. Here is a quotation from Eckermann's Voodooism and the Negroid Religions:<br/>"'The true voodoo-worshipper attempts nothing of importance without certain sacrifices which are intended to propitiate his unclean gods. In extreme cases these rites take the form of human sacrifices followed by cannibalism. The more usual victims are a white cock, which is plucked in pieces alive, or a black goat, whose throat is cut and body burned.'<br/>"So, you see our savage friend was very orthodox in his ritual. It is grotesque," I added, "but, as Molly remarked, there is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Look up Victorian snake rings. Sherlock is back in the next chapter!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation, but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all the facts. Only now am I allowed to supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain. The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life. Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. Let me say to that public, which has shown some interest in those glimpses which I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a very remarkable man, that they are not to blame me if I have not shared my knowledge with them, for I should have considered it my first duty to do so, had I not been barred by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the third of last month.<br/>It can be imagined that my close intimacy with Sherlock Holmes had interested me deeply in crime. There was none, however, which appealed to me like this tragedy of Ronald Adair. As I read the evidence at the inquest, which led up to a verdict of willful murder against some person or persons unknown, I realized more clearly than I had ever done the loss which the community had sustained by the death of Sherlock Holmes. There were points about this strange business which would, I was sure, have specially appealed to him, and the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or more probably anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the first criminal agent in Europe. All day, as I drove upon my round, I turned over the case in my mind and found no explanation which appeared to me to be adequate. At the risk of telling a twice-told tale, I will recapitulate the facts as they were known to the public at the conclusion of the inquest.<br/>The Honourable Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, at that time governor of one of the Australian colonies. Adair’s mother had returned from Australia to undergo the operation for cataract, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughter Hilda were living together at 427, Park Lane. The youth moved in the best society—had, so far as was known, no enemies and no particular vices. He had been engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, of Carstairs, but the engagement had been broken off by mutual consent some months before, and there was no sign that it had left any very profound feeling behind it. For the rest, the man’s life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits were quiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going young aristocrat that death came, in most strange and unexpected form, between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March 30, 1894.<br/>Ronald Adair was fond of cards—playing continually, but never for such stakes as would hurt him. He was a member of the Baldwin, the Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. It was shown that, after dinner on the day of his death, he had played a rubber of whist at the latter club. He had also played there in the afternoon. The evidence of those who had played with him—Mr. Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Moran—showed that the game was whist, and that there was a fairly equal fall of the cards. Adair might have lost five pounds, but not more. His fortune was a considerable one, and such a loss could not in any way affect him. He had played nearly every day at one club or other, but he was a cautious player, and usually rose a winner. It came out in evidence that, in partnership with Colonel Moran, he had actually won as much as four hundred and twenty pounds in a sitting, some weeks before, from Godfrey Milner and Lord Balmoral. So much for his recent history as it came out at the inquest.<br/>On the evening of the crime, he returned from the club exactly at ten. His mother and sister were out spending the evening with a relation. The servant deposed that she heard him enter the front room on the second floor, generally used as his sitting-room. She had lit a fire there, and as it smoked; she had opened the window. No sound was heard from the room until eleven-twenty, the hour of the return of Lady Maynooth and her daughter. Desiring to say good-night, she attempted to enter her son’s room. The door was locked on the inside, and no answer could be got to their cries and knocking. Help was obtained, and the door forced. The unfortunate young man was found lying near the table. His head had been horribly mutilated by an expanding revolver bullet, but no weapon of any sort was to be found in the room. On the table lay two banknotes for ten pounds each and seventeen pounds ten in silver and gold, the money arranged in little piles of varying amount. There were some figures also upon a sheet of paper, with the names of some club friends opposite to them, from which it was conjectured that before his death he was endeavouring to make out his losses or winnings at cards.<br/>A minute examination of the circumstances served only to make the case more complex. In the first place, no reason could be given why the young man should have fastened the door upon the inside. There was the possibility that the murderer had done this, and had afterwards escaped by the window. The drop was at least twenty feet, however, and a bed of crocuses in full bloom lay beneath. Neither the flowers nor the earth showed any sign of having been disturbed, nor were there any marks upon the narrow strip of grass which separated the house from the road. Apparently, therefore, it was the young man himself who had fastened the door. But how did he come by his death? No one could have climbed up to the window without leaving traces. Suppose a man had fired through the window, he would indeed be a remarkable shot who could with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound. Again, Park Lane is a frequented thoroughfare; there is a cab stand within a hundred yards of the house. No one had heard a shot. And yet there was the dead man and there the revolver bullet, which had mushroomed out, as soft-nosed bullets will, and so inflicted a wound which must have caused instantaneous death. Such were the circumstances of the Park Lane Mystery, which were further complicated by entire absence of motive, since, as I have said, young Adair was not known to have any enemy, and no attempt had been made to remove the money or valuables in the room.<br/>All day I turned these facts over in my mind, endeavouring to hit upon some theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that line of least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the starting-point of every investigation. I confess that I made little progress. In the evening I strolled across the Park, and found myself about six o’clock at the Oxford Street end of Park Lane. A group of loafers upon the pavements, all staring up at a particular window, directed me to the house which I had come to see. A tall, thin man with coloured glasses, whom I strongly suspected of being a plain-clothes detective, was pointing out some theory of his own, while the others crowded round to listen to what he said. I got as near him as I could, but his observations seemed to me to be absurd, so I withdrew again in some disgust. As I did so I struck against an elderly, deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up, I observed the title of one of them, The Origin of Tree Worship, and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile, who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes. I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt, he turned upon his heel, and I saw his curved back and white side-whiskers disappear among the throng.<br/>My observations of No. 427, Park Lane did little to clear up the problem in which I was interested. The house was separated from the street by a low wall and railing, the whole not more than five feet high. It was perfectly easy, therefore, for anyone to get into the garden, but the window was entirely inaccessible, since there was no waterpipe or anything which could help the most active man to climb it. More puzzled than ever, I retraced my steps to Kensington. I had not been in my study five minutes when the maid entered to say that a person desired to see me. To my astonishment it was none other than my strange old book collector, his sharp, wizened face peering out from a frame of white hair, and his precious volumes, a dozen of them at least, wedged under his right arm.<br/>“You’re surprised to see me, sir,” said he, in a strange, croaking voice.<br/>I acknowledged that I was.<br/>“Well, I’ve a conscience, sir, and when I chanced to see you go into this house, as I came hobbling after you, I thought to myself, I’ll just step in and see that kind gentleman, and tell him that if I was a bit gruff in my manner there was not any harm meant, and that I am much obliged to him for picking up my books.”<br/>“You make too much of a trifle,” said I. “May I ask how you knew who I was?”<br/>“Well, sir, if it isn’t too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you’ll find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street, and very happy to see you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir. Here’s British Birds, and Catullus, and The Holy War—a bargain, every one of them. With five volumes you could just fill that gap on that second shelf. It looks untidy, does it not, sir?”<br/>I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again, Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life. Certainly, a grey mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared, I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand.<br/>“My dear Watson,” said the well-remembered voice, “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.”<br/>I gripped him by the arms.<br/>“Holmes!” I cried. “Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out of that awful abyss?”<br/>“Wait a moment,” said he. “Are you sure that you are really fit to discuss things? I have given you a serious shock by my unnecessarily dramatic reappearance.”<br/>“I am all right, but indeed, Holmes, I can hardly believe my eyes. Good heavens! to think that you—you of all men—should be standing in my study.” Again, I gripped him by the sleeve, and felt the thin, sinewy arm beneath it. “Well, you’re not a spirit anyhow,” said I. “My dear chap, I’m overjoyed to see you. Sit down, and tell me how you came alive out of that dreadful chasm.”<br/>He sat opposite to me, and lit a cigarette in his old, nonchalant manner. He was dressed in the seedy frockcoat of the book merchant, but the rest of that individual lay in a pile of white hair and old books upon the table. Holmes looked even thinner and keener than of old, but there was a dead-white tinge in his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not been a healthy one.<br/>“I am glad to stretch myself, Watson,” said he. “It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several hours on end. Now, my dear fellow, in the matter of these explanations, we have, if I may ask for your cooperation, a hard and dangerous night’s work in front of us. Perhaps it would be better if I gave you an account of the whole situation when that work is finished.”<br/>“I am full of curiosity. I should much prefer to hear now.”<br/>“You’ll come with me to-night?”<br/>“When you like and where you like.”<br/>“This is, indeed, like the old days. We shall have time for a mouthful of dinner before we need go. Well, then, about that chasm. I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it.”<br/>“You never were in it?”<br/>“No, Watson, I never was in it. My note to you was absolutely genuine. I had little doubt that I had come to the end of my career when I perceived the somewhat sinister figure of the late Professor Moriarty standing upon the narrow pathway which led to safety. I read an inexorable purpose in his grey eyes. I exchanged some remarks with him, therefore, and obtained his courteous permission to write the short note which you afterwards received. I left it with my cigarette-box and my stick, and I walked along the pathway, Moriarty still at my heels. When I reached the end, I stood at bay. He drew no weapon, but he rushed at me and threw his long arms around me. He knew that his own game was up, and was only anxious to revenge himself upon me. We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds, and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance, and over he went. With my face over the brink, I saw him fall for a long way. Then he struck a rock, bounded off, and splashed into the water.”<br/>I listened with amazement to this explanation, which Holmes delivered between the puffs of his cigarette.<br/>“But the tracks!” I cried. “I saw, with my own eyes, that two went down the path and none returned.”<br/>“It came about in this way. The instant that the Professor had disappeared, it struck me what a really extraordinarily lucky chance Fate had placed in my way. I knew that Moriarty was not the only man who had sworn my death. There were at least three others whose desire for vengeance upon me would only be increased by the death of their leader. They were all most dangerous men. One or other would certainly get me. On the other hand, if all the world was convinced that I was dead they would take liberties, these men, they would soon lay themselves open, and sooner or later I could destroy them. Then it would be time for me to announce that I was still in the land of the living. So rapidly does the brain act that I believe I had thought this all out before Professor Moriarty had reached the bottom of the Reichenbach Fall.<br/>“I stood up and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer. That was not literally true. A few small footholds presented themselves, and there was some indication of a ledge. The cliff is so high that to climb it all was an obvious impossibility, and it was equally impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving some tracks. I might, it is true, have reversed my boots, as I have done on similar occasions, but the sight of three sets of tracks in one direction would certainly have suggested a deception. On the whole, then, it was best that I should risk the climb. It was not a pleasant business, Watson. The fall roared beneath me. I am not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear Moriarty’s voice screaming at me out of the abyss. A mistake would have been fatal. More than once, as tufts of grass came out in my hand or my foot slipped in the wet notches of the rock, I thought that I was gone. But I struggled upward, and at last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where I could lie unseen, in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched, when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most sympathetic and inefficient manner the circumstances of my death.<br/>“At last, when you had all formed your inevitable and totally erroneous conclusions, you departed for the hotel, and I was left alone. I had imagined that I had reached the end of my adventures, but a very unexpected occurrence showed me that there were surprises still in store for me. A huge rock, falling from above, boomed past me, struck the path, and bounded over into the chasm. For an instant I thought that it was an accident, but a moment later, looking up, I saw a man’s head against the darkening sky, and another stone struck the very ledge upon which I was stretched, within a foot of my head. Of course, the meaning of this was obvious. Moriarty had not been alone. A confederate—and even that one glance had told me how dangerous a man that confederate was—had kept guard while the Professor had attacked me. From a distance, unseen by me, he had been a witness of his friend’s death and of my escape. He had waited, and then making his way round to the top of the cliff, he had endeavoured to succeed where his comrade had failed.<br/>“I did not take long to think about it, Watson. Again, I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don’t think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, for another stone sang past me as I hung by my hands from the edge of the ledge. Halfway down I slipped, but, by the blessing of God, I landed, torn and bleeding, upon the path. I took to my heels, did ten miles over the mountains in the darkness, and a week later I found myself in Florence, with the certainty that no one in the world knew what had become of me.<br/>“I owe you many apologies, my dear Watson, but it was all-important that it should be thought I was dead, and it is quite certain that you would not have written so convincing an account of my unhappy end had you not yourself thought that it was true. Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret. For that reason, I turned away from you this evening when you upset my books, for I was in danger at the time, and any show of surprise and emotion upon your part might have drawn attention to my identity and led to the most deplorable and irreparable results. The course of events in London did not run so well as I had hoped, for the trial of the Moriarty gang left two of its most dangerous members, my own most vindictive enemies, at liberty. I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa, and spending some days with the head lama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of France. Having concluded this to my satisfaction and learning that only one of my enemies was now left in London, I was about to return when my movements were hastened by the news of this very remarkable Park Lane Mystery, which not only appealed to me by its own merits, but which seemed to offer some most peculiar personal opportunities. I came over at once to London, called in my own person at Baker Street, threw Mrs. Hudson into violent hysterics, and found that Mycroft had preserved my rooms and my papers exactly as they had always been. So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock to-day I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned.”<br/>Such was the remarkable narrative to which I listened on that April evening—a narrative which would have been utterly incredible to me had it not been confirmed by the actual sight of the tall, spare figure and the keen, eager face, which I had never thought to see again. In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than in his words. “Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,” said he; “and I have a piece of work for us both to-night which, if we can bring it to a successful conclusion, will in itself justify a man’s life on this planet.” <br/>“Wait,” I asked, “Mycroft kept your rooms. He was your confidante, then.”<br/>“Yes, I would call on him when I needed money,” Despite the sensibleness of this statement, Holmes looked embarrassed for perhaps the first time in his life. I didn’t need to wait long for an explanation for his behavior, because right then my wife and Molly Hope returned from one of Molly’s first outings since the death of her father and I learned that Holmes had had a second confidante all these years — his wife. The snake ring that had hung around Molly’s neck was now at home on a finger of the hand that rested on her husband’s hand as I listened to another remarkable tale. Holmes described it as an epiphany, but Mary and I agree that, despite his great powers of observation, in the three years between meeting Molly and that fateful night at Reichenbach Falls, he displayed an astonishing ability to not observe himself. However, it came about, Holmes could no longer separate the emotional from the rational. He had to choose a distraction, either the desire to return to the woman he loves, or the worry of possibly losing her while he was gone. He confessed his love to Molly and then eloped with her, with Mycroft and Lord Hope as witnesses. Lord Hope’s illness had just been diagnosed and Molly couldn’t bear to keep the happiness of knowing his daughter was married from him. Molly didn’t even tell Mary her secret until their outing that day, knowing her husband would soon make his grand reappearance upon the earth.<br/>“You will hear and see enough before morning,” Holmes preempted any further questions. “We have three years of the past to discuss. Let that suffice until half-past nine, when we start upon the notable adventure of the empty house.”<br/>It was indeed like old times when, at that hour, I found myself seated beside him in a hansom, my revolver in my pocket, and the thrill of adventure in my heart. Holmes was cold and stern and silent. As the gleam of the street-lamps flashed upon his austere features, I saw that his brows were drawn down in thought and his thin lips compressed. I knew not what wild beast we were about to hunt down in the dark jungle of criminal London, but I was well assured, from the bearing of this master huntsman, that the adventure was a most grave one—while the sardonic smile which occasionally broke through his ascetic gloom boded little good for the object of our quest.<br/>I had imagined that we were bound for Baker Street, but Holmes stopped the cab at the corner of Cavendish Square. I observed that as he stepped out, he gave a most searching glance to right and left, and at every subsequent street corner he took the utmost pains to assure that he was not followed. Our route was certainly a singular one. Holmes’s knowledge of the byways of London was extraordinary, and on this occasion, he passed rapidly and with an assured step through a network of mews and stables, the very existence of which I had never known. We emerged at last into a small road, lined with old, gloomy houses, which led us into Manchester Street, and so to Blandford Street. Here he turned swiftly down a narrow passage, passed through a wooden gate into a deserted yard, and then opened with a key the back door of a house. We entered together, and he closed it behind us.<br/>The place was pitch dark, but it was evident to me that it was an empty house. Our feet creaked and crackled over the bare planking, and my outstretched hand touched a wall from which the paper was hanging in ribbons. Holmes’s cold, thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forward down a long hall, until I dimly saw the murky fanlight over the door. Here Holmes turned suddenly to the right and we found ourselves in a large, square, empty room, heavily shadowed in the corners, but faintly lit in the centre from the lights of the street beyond. There was no lamp near, and the window was thick with dust, so that we could only just discern each other’s figures within. My companion put his hand upon my shoulder and his lips close to my ear.<br/>“Do you know where we are?” he whispered.<br/>“Surely that is Baker Street,” I answered, staring through the dim window.<br/>“Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old quarters.”<br/>“But why are we here?”<br/>“Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile. Might I trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every precaution not to show yourself, and then to look up at our old rooms—the starting-point of so many of your little fairy-tales?”<br/>I crept forward and looked across at the familiar window. As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter.<br/>“Well?” said he.<br/>“Good heavens!” I cried. “It is marvelous.”<br/>“I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,” said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. “It really is rather like me, is it not?”<br/>“I should be prepared to swear that it was you.”<br/>“The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax. The rest I arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon.”<br/>“But why?”<br/>“Because, my dear Watson, I had the strongest possible reason for wishing certain people to think that I was there when I was really elsewhere.”<br/>“And you thought the rooms were watched?”<br/>“I knew that they were watched.”<br/>“By whom?”<br/>“By my old enemies, Watson. By the charming society whose leader lies in the Reichenbach Fall. You must remember that they knew, and only they knew, that I was still alive. Sooner or later they believed that I should come back to my rooms. They watched them continuously, and this morning they saw me arrive.”<br/>“How do you know?”<br/>“Because I recognized their sentinel when I glanced out of my window. He is a harmless enough fellow, Parker by name, a garroter by trade, and a remarkable performer upon the jew’s-harp. I cared nothing for him. But I cared a great deal for the much more formidable person who was behind him, the bosom friend of Moriarty, the man who dropped the rocks over the cliff, the most cunning and dangerous criminal in London. That is the man who is after me to-night Watson, and that is the man who is quite unaware that we are after him.”<br/>My friend’s plans were gradually revealing themselves. From this convenient retreat, the watchers were being watched and the trackers tracked. That angular shadow up yonder was the bait, and we were the hunters. In silence we stood together in the darkness and watched the hurrying figures who passed and repassed in front of us. Holmes was silent and motionless; but I could tell that he was keenly alert, and that his eyes were fixed intently upon the stream of passers-by. It was a bleak and boisterous night and the wind whistled shrilly down the long street. Many people were moving to and fro, most of them muffled in their coats and cravats. Once or twice it seemed to me that I had seen the same figure before, and I especially noticed two men who appeared to be sheltering themselves from the wind in the doorway of a house some distance up the street. I tried to draw my companion’s attention to them; but he gave a little ejaculation of impatience, and continued to stare into the street. More than once he fidgeted with his feet and tapped rapidly with his fingers upon the wall. It was evident to me that he was becoming uneasy, and that his plans were not working out altogether as he had hoped. At last, as midnight approached and the street gradually cleared, he paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. I was about to make some remark to him, when I raised my eyes to the lighted window, and again experienced almost as great a surprise as before. I clutched Holmes’s arm, and pointed upward.<br/>“The shadow has moved!” I cried.<br/>It was indeed no longer the profile, but the back, which was turned towards us.<br/>Three years had certainly not smoothed the asperities of his temper or his impatience with a less active intelligence than his own.<br/>“Of course, it has moved,” said he. “Am I such a farcical bungler, Watson, that I should erect an obvious dummy, and expect that some of the sharpest men in Europe would be deceived by it? We have been in this room two hours, and Mrs. Hudson has made some change in that figure eight times, or once in every quarter of an hour. She works it from the front, so that her shadow may never be seen. Ah!” He drew in his breath with a shrill, excited intake. In the dim light I saw his head thrown forward, his whole attitude rigid with attention. Outside the street was absolutely deserted. Those two men might still be crouching in the doorway, but I could no longer see them. All was still and dark, save only that brilliant yellow screen in front of us with the black figure outlined upon its centre. Again, in the utter silence I heard that thin, sibilant note which spoke of intense suppressed excitement. An instant later he pulled me back into the blackest corner of the room, and I felt his warning hand upon my lips. The fingers which clutched me were quivering. Never had I known my friend more moved, and yet the dark street still stretched lonely and motionless before us.<br/>But suddenly I was aware of that which his keener senses had already distinguished. A low, stealthy sound came to my ears, not from the direction of Baker Street, but from the back of the very house in which we lay concealed. A door opened and shut. An instant later, steps crept down the passage—steps which were meant to be silent, but which reverberated harshly through the empty house. Holmes crouched back against the wall, and I did the same, my hand closing upon the handle of my revolver. Peering through the gloom, I saw the vague outline of a man, a shade blacker than the blackness of the open door. He stood for an instant, and then he crept forward, crouching, menacing, into the room. He was within three yards of us, this sinister figure, and I had braced myself to meet his spring, before I realized that he had no idea of our presence. He passed close beside us, stole over to the window, and very softly and noiselessly raised it for half a foot. As he sank to the level of this opening, the light of the street, no longer dimmed by the dusty glass, fell full upon his face. The man seemed to be beside himself with excitement. His two eyes shone like stars, and his features were working convulsively. He was an elderly man, with a thin, projecting nose, a high, bald forehead, and a huge grizzled moustache. An opera hat was pushed to the back of his head, and an evening dress shirt-front gleamed out through his open overcoat. His face was gaunt and swarthy, scored with deep, savage lines. In his hand he carried what appeared to be a stick, but as he laid it down upon the floor it gave a metallic clang. Then from the pocket of his overcoat he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which ended with a loud, sharp click, as if a spring or bolt had fallen into its place. Still kneeling upon the floor, he bent forward and threw all his weight and strength upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun, with a curiously misshapen butt. He opened it at the breech, put something in, and snapped the breech-lock. Then, crouching down, he rested the end of the barrel upon the ledge of the open window, and I saw his long moustache droop over the stock and his eye gleam as it peered along the sights. I heard a little sigh of satisfaction as he cuddled the butt into his shoulder; and saw that amazing target, the black man on the yellow ground, standing clear at the end of his foresight. For an instant he was rigid and motionless. Then his finger tightened on the trigger. There was a strange, loud whiz and a long, silvery tinkle of broken glass. At that instant Holmes sprang like a tiger on to the marksman’s back, and hurled him flat upon his face. He was up again in a moment, and with convulsive strength he seized Holmes by the throat, but I struck him on the head with the butt of my revolver, and he dropped again upon the floor. I fell upon him, and as I held him my comrade blew a shrill call upon a whistle. There was the clatter of running feet upon the pavement, and two policemen in uniform, with one plain-clothes detective, rushed through the front entrance and into the room.<br/>“That you, Lestrade?” said Holmes.<br/>“Yes, Mr. Holmes. I took the job myself. It’s good to see you back in London, sir.”<br/>“I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one year won’t do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than your usual—that’s to say, you handled it fairly well.”<br/>We had all risen to our feet, our prisoner breathing hard, with a stalwart constable on each side of him. Already a few loiterers had begun to collect in the street. Holmes stepped up to the window, closed it, and dropped the blinds. Lestrade had produced two candles, and the policemen had uncovered their lanterns. I was able at last to have a good look at our prisoner.<br/>It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us. With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil. But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature’s plainest danger-signals. He took no heed of any of us, but his eyes were fixed upon Holmes’s face with an expression in which hatred and amazement were equally blended. “You fiend!” he kept on muttering. “You clever, clever fiend!”<br/>“Ah, Colonel!” said Holmes, arranging his rumpled collar. “‘Journeys end in lovers’ meetings,’ as the old play says. I don’t think I have had the pleasure of seeing you since you favoured me with those attentions as I lay on the ledge above the Reichenbach Fall.”<br/>The colonel still stared at my friend like a man in a trance. “You cunning, cunning fiend!” was all that he could say.<br/>“I have not introduced you yet,” said Holmes. “This, gentlemen, is Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, and the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced. I believe I am correct Colonel, in saying that your bag of tigers still remains unrivalled?”<br/>The fierce old man said nothing, but still glared at my companion. With his savage eyes and bristling moustache, he was wonderfully like a tiger himself.<br/>“I wonder that my very simple stratagem could deceive so old a shikari,” said Holmes. “It must be very familiar to you. Have you not tethered a young kid under a tree, lain above it with your rifle, and waited for the bait to bring up your tiger? This empty house is my tree, and you are my tiger. You have possibly had other guns in reserve in case there should be several tigers, or in the unlikely supposition of your own aim failing you. These,” he pointed around, “are my other guns. The parallel is exact.”<br/>Colonel Moran sprang forward with a snarl of rage, but the constables dragged him back. The fury upon his face was terrible to look at.<br/>“I confess that you had one small surprise for me,” said Holmes. “I did not anticipate that you would yourself make use of this empty house and this convenient front window. I had imagined you as operating from the street, where my friend, Lestrade and his merry men were awaiting you. With that exception, all has gone as I expected.”<br/>Colonel Moran turned to the official detective.<br/>“You may or may not have just cause for arresting me,” said he, “but at least there can be no reason why I should submit to the gibes of this person. If I am in the hands of the law, let things be done in a legal way.”<br/>“Well, that’s reasonable enough,” said Lestrade. “Nothing further you have to say, Mr. Holmes, before we go?”<br/>Holmes had picked up the powerful air-gun from the floor, and was examining its mechanism.<br/>“An admirable and unique weapon,” said he, “noiseless and of tremendous power: I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty. For years I have been aware of its existence though I have never before had the opportunity of handling it. I commend it very specially to your attention, Lestrade and also the bullets which fit it.”<br/>“You can trust us to look after that, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade, as the whole party moved towards the door. “Anything further to say?”<br/>“Only to ask what charge you intend to prefer?”<br/>“What charge, sir? Why, of course, the attempted murder of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”<br/>“Not so, Lestrade. I do not propose to appear in the matter at all. To you, and to you only, belongs the credit of the remarkable arrest which you have effected. Yes, Lestrade, I congratulate you! With your usual happy mixture of cunning and audacity, you have got him.”<br/>“Got him! Got whom, Mr. Holmes?”<br/>“The man that the whole force has been seeking in vain—Colonel Sebastian Moran, who shot the Honourable Ronald Adair with an expanding bullet from an air-gun through the open window of the second-floor front of No. 427, Park Lane, upon the thirtieth of last month. That’s the charge, Lestrade. And now, Watson, if you can endure the draught from a broken window, can I trust that you will call upon me tomorrow?”<br/>Our old chambers had been left unchanged through the supervision of Mycroft Holmes and the immediate care of Mrs. Hudson. As Mary and I entered I saw, it is true, an unwonted tidiness, but the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin-case, and the pipe-rack—even the Persian slipper which contained the tobacco—all met my eyes as I glanced round me. There was one new occupant of the room—the wax-coloured model of my friend, so admirably done that it was a perfect facsimile. It stood on a small pedestal table with an old dressing-gown of Holmes’s draped round it. Unlike last night however, it was also wearing a deerstalker hat like the illustrator of these stories seems to be so fond of for some reason. Molly must have put it there, since Holmes would have immediately removed it had it been placed by anyone else.<br/>“Yes, Mrs. Hudson carried the thing out very well, she even found the bullet,” Holmes held it out to me. “A soft revolver bullet, as you perceive, Watson. There’s genius in that, for who would expect to find such a thing fired from an airgun? And now, Watson, let me see you in your old seat once more, for there are several points which I should like to discuss with you.”<br/>He was the Holmes of old in the mouse-coloured dressing-gown matching the one on his effigy.<br/>“The old shikari’s nerves have not lost their steadiness, nor his eyes their keenness,” said he, with a laugh, as he pointed at the shattered forehead of his bust. “Plumb in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain. He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?”<br/>“No, I have not.”<br/>“Well, well, such is fame! But, then, if I remember right, you had not heard the name of Professor James Moriarty, who had one of the great brains of the century. Just give me down my index of biographies from the shelf.”<br/>He turned over the pages lazily, leaning back in his chair and blowing great clouds from his cigar.<br/>“My collection of M’s is a fine one,” said he. “Moriarty himself is enough to make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of abominable memory, and Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross, and, finally, here is our friend of to-night.”<br/>He handed over the book, and I read:<br/>Moran, Sebastian, Colonel. Unemployed. Formerly 1st Bangalore Pioneers. Born London, 1840. Son of Sir Augustus Moran, C.B., once British Minister to Persia. Educated Eton and Oxford. Served in Jowaki Campaign, Afghan Campaign, Charasiab (despatches), Sherpur, and Cabul. Author of Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas (1881); Three Months in the Jungle (1884). Address: Conduit Street. Clubs: The Anglo-Indian, the Tankerville, the Bagatelle Card Club.<br/>On the margin was written, in Holmes’s precise hand:<br/>The second most dangerous man in London.<br/>“This is astonishing,” said I, as I handed back the volume. “The man’s career is that of an honourable soldier.”<br/>“It is true,” Holmes answered. “Up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger. There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family.”<br/>“It is surely rather fanciful.”<br/>“Well, I don’t insist upon it. Whatever the cause, Colonel Moran began to go wrong. Without any open scandal, he still made India too hot to hold him. He retired, came to London, and again acquired an evil name. It was at this time that he was sought out by Professor Moriarty, to whom for a time he was chief of the staff. Moriarty supplied him liberally with money, and used him only in one or two very high-class jobs, which no ordinary criminal could have undertaken. You may have some recollection of the death of Mrs. Stewart, of Lauder, in 1887. Not? Well, I am sure Moran was at the bottom of it, but nothing could be proved. So cleverly was the colonel concealed that, even when the Moriarty gang was broken up, we could not incriminate him. You remember at that date, when I called upon you in your rooms, how I put up the shutters for fear of air-guns? No doubt you thought me fanciful. I knew exactly what I was doing, for I knew of the existence of this remarkable gun, and I knew also that one of the best shots in the world would be behind it. When we were in Switzerland, he followed us with Moriarty, and it was undoubtedly he who gave me that evil five minutes on the Reichenbach ledge.<br/>“You may think that I read the papers with some attention during my sojourn in France, on the look-out for any chance of laying him by the heels. So long as he was free in London, my life would really not have been worth living. Night and day the shadow would have been over me, and sooner or later his chance must have come. What could I do? I could not shoot him at sight, or I should myself be in the dock. There was no use appealing to a magistrate. They cannot interfere on the strength of what would appear to them to be a wild suspicion. So, I could do nothing. But I watched the criminal news, knowing that sooner or later I should get him. Then came the death of this Ronald Adair. My chance had come at last. Knowing what I did, was it not certain that Colonel Moran had done it? He had played cards with the lad, he had followed him home from the club, he had shot him through the open window. There was not a doubt of it. The bullets alone are enough to put his head in a noose. I came over at once. I was seen by the sentinel, who would, I knew, direct the colonel’s attention to my presence. He could not fail to connect my sudden return with his crime, and to be terribly alarmed. I was sure that he would make an attempt to get me out of the way at once, and would bring round his murderous weapon for that purpose. I left him an excellent mark in the window, and, having warned the police that they might be needed—by the way, Watson, you spotted their presence in that doorway with unerring accuracy—I took up what seemed to me to be a judicious post for observation, never dreaming that he would choose the same spot for his attack. Now, my dear Watson, does anything remain for me to explain?”<br/>“Yes,” said I. “You have not made it clear what was Colonel Moran’s motive in murdering the Honourable Ronald Adair?”<br/>“Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault. Each may form his own hypothesis upon the present evidence, and yours is as likely to be correct as mine.”<br/>“You have formed one, then?”<br/>“I think that it is not difficult to explain the facts. It came out in evidence that Colonel Moran and young Adair had, between them, won a considerable amount of money. Now, Moran undoubtedly played foul—of that I have long been aware. I believe that on the day of the murder Adair had discovered that Moran was cheating. Very likely he had spoken to him privately, and had threatened to expose him unless he voluntarily resigned his membership of the club, and promised not to play cards again. It is unlikely that a youngster like Adair would at once make a hideous scandal by exposing a well-known man so much older than himself. Probably he acted as I suggest. The exclusion from his clubs would mean ruin to Moran, who lived by his ill-gotten card-gains. He therefore murdered Adair, who at the time was endeavouring to work out how much money he should himself return, since he could not profit by his partner’s foul play. He locked the door lest the ladies should surprise him and insist upon knowing what he was doing with these names and coins. Will it pass?”<br/>“I have no doubt that you have hit upon the truth.”<br/>“It will be verified or disproved at the trial. Meanwhile, come what may, Colonel Moran will trouble us no more. The famous air-gun of Von Herder will embellish the Scotland Yard Museum, and once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complex life of London so plentifully presents.”</p>
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<a name="section0025"><h2>25. THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER</h2></a>
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    <p>“From the point of view of the criminal expert,” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, “London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.”<br/>“I can hardly think that you would find many decent citizens to agree with you,” I answered.<br/>“Well, well, I feel I may be a little selfish,” said he, with a smile, as he pushed back his chair from the breakfast-table. “The community is certainly the gainer, and no one the loser, save the poor out-of-work specialist, and the pregnant wife he must support. With that man in the field, one’s morning paper presented infinite possibilities. Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless outrage—to the man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected whole. To the scientific student of the higher criminal world, no capital in Europe offered the advantages which London then possessed. But now——” He shrugged his shoulders in humorous deprecation of the state of things which he had himself done so much to produce.<br/>At the time of which I speak, Holmes had been back for some months, and those months had not been so uneventful as he had stated, for I find, on looking over my notes, that this period includes the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland, which nearly cost us both our lives. Twice, first during the case and then at the hands of our wives when we came home. There were also the cases that the man who refused to congratulate me on my marriage would not have been able to solve without the assistance of his own wife. Most notably, she discovered that the genius who had been writing the coded letters to the police actually could neither spell nor follow his own cipher correctly.<br/>Said wife scoffed at her husband’s statement that crime was necessary for her sake from her position on the floor, playing with Rosamunde with Mary. Her husband winked at her. Holmes was leaning back in his chair after his whimsical protest, and was reopening his morning paper in a leisurely fashion, when our attention was arrested by a tremendous ring at the bell, followed immediately by a hollow drumming sound, as if someone were beating on the outer door with his fist. As it opened there came a tumultuous rush into the hall, rapid feet clattered up the stair, and an instant later a wild-eyed and frantic young man, pale, disheveled, and palpitating, burst into the room. Mary and Molly took Rosamunde to my old room, as they always did when clients came while we were visiting 221B. the young man looked from one to the other of us, and under our gaze of inquiry he became conscious that some apology was needed for this unceremonious entry. <br/>“I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes,” he cried. “You mustn’t blame me. I am nearly mad. Mr. Holmes, I am the unhappy John Hector McFarlane.”<br/>He made the announcement as if the name alone would explain both his visit and its manner, but I could see, by my companion’s unresponsive face, that it meant no more to him than to me.<br/>“Have a cigarette, Mr. McFarlane,” said he, pushing his case across. “I am sure that, with your symptoms, my friend Dr. Watson here would prescribe a sedative. The weather has been so very warm these last few days. Now, if you feel a little more composed, I should be glad if you would sit down in that chair, and tell us very slowly and quietly who you are, and what it is that you want. You mentioned your name, as if I should recognize it, but I assure you that, beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.”<br/>Familiar as I was with my friend’s methods, it was not difficult for me to follow his deductions, and to observe the untidiness of attire, the sheaf of legal papers, the watch-charm, and the breathing which had prompted them. Our client, however, stared in amazement.<br/>“Yes, I am all that, Mr. Holmes; and, in addition, I am the most unfortunate man at this moment in London. For heaven’s sake, don’t abandon me, Mr. Holmes! If they come to arrest me before I have finished my story, make them give me time, so that I may tell you the whole truth. I could go to jail happy if I knew that you were working for me outside.”<br/>“Arrest you!” said Holmes. “This is really most grati—most interesting. On what charge do you expect to be arrested?”<br/>“Upon the charge of murdering Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood.”<br/>My companion’s expressive face showed a sympathy which was not, I am afraid, entirely unmixed with satisfaction.<br/>“Dear me,” said he, “it was only this moment at breakfast that I was saying to my friend, Dr. Watson, that sensational cases had disappeared out of our papers.”<br/>Our visitor stretched forward a quivering hand and picked up the Daily Telegraph, which still lay upon Holmes’s knee.<br/>“If you had looked at it, sir, you would have seen at a glance what the errand is on which I have come to you this morning. I feel as if my name and my misfortune must be in every man’s mouth.” He turned it over to expose the central page. “Here it is, and with your permission I will read it to you. Listen to this, Mr. Holmes. The headlines are: ‘Mysterious Affair at Lower Norwood. Disappearance of a Well-known Builder. Suspicion of Murder and Arson. A Clue to the Criminal.’ That is the clue which they are already following, Mr. Holmes, and I know that it leads infallibly to me. I have been followed from London Bridge Station, and I am sure that they are only waiting for the warrant to arrest me. It will break my mother’s heart—it will break her heart!” He wrung his hands in an agony of apprehension, and swayed backward and forward in his chair.<br/>I looked with interest upon this man, who was accused of being the perpetrator of a crime of violence. He was flaxen-haired and handsome, in a washed-out negative fashion, with frightened blue eyes, and a clean-shaven face, with a weak, sensitive mouth. His age may have been about twenty-seven, his dress and bearing that of a gentleman. From the pocket of his light summer overcoat protruded the bundle of indorsed papers which proclaimed his profession.<br/>“We must use what time we have,” said Holmes. “Watson, would you have the kindness to take the paper and to read the paragraph in question?”<br/>Underneath the vigorous headlines which our client had quoted, I read the following suggestive narrative:<br/>“Late last night, or early this morning, an incident occurred at Lower Norwood which points, it is feared, to a serious crime. Mr. Jonas Oldacre is a well-known resident of that suburb, where he has carried on his business as a builder for many years. Mr. Oldacre is a bachelor, fifty-two years of age, and lives in Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name. He has had the reputation of being a man of eccentric habits, secretive and retiring. For some years he has practically withdrawn from the business, in which he is said to have massed considerable wealth. A small timber-yard still exists, however, at the back of the house, and last night, about twelve o’clock, an alarm was given that one of the stacks was on fire. The engines were soon upon the spot, but the dry wood burned with great fury, and it was impossible to arrest the conflagration until the stack had been entirely consumed. Up to this point the incident bore the appearance of an ordinary accident, but fresh indications seem to point to serious crime. Surprise was expressed at the absence of the master of the establishment from the scene of the fire, and an inquiry followed, which showed that he had disappeared from the house. An examination of his room revealed that the bed had not been slept in, that a safe which stood in it was open, that a number of important papers were scattered about the room, and finally, that there were signs of a murderous struggle, slight traces of blood being found within the room, and an oaken walking-stick, which also showed stains of blood upon the handle. It is known that Mr. Jonas Oldacre had received a late visitor in his bedroom upon that night, and the stick found has been identified as the property of this person, who is a young London solicitor named John Hector McFarlane, junior partner of Graham and McFarlane, of 426, Gresham Buildings, E.C. The police believe that they have evidence in their possession which supplies a very convincing motive for the crime, and altogether it cannot be doubted that sensational developments will follow.<br/>    “LATER. —It is rumoured as we go to press that Mr. John Hector McFarlane has actually been arrested on the charge of the murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre. It is at least certain that a warrant has been issued. There have been further and sinister developments in the investigation at Norwood. Besides the signs of a struggle in the room of the unfortunate builder it is now known that the French windows of his bedroom (which is on the ground floor) were found to be open, that there were marks as if some bulky object had been dragged across to the wood-pile, and, finally, it is asserted that charred remains have been found among the charcoal ashes of the fire. The police theory is that a most sensational crime has been committed, that the victim was clubbed to death in his own bedroom, his papers rifled, and his dead body dragged across to the wood-stack, which was then ignited so as to hide all traces of the crime. The conduct of the criminal investigation has been left in the experienced hands of Inspector Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, who is following up the clues with his accustomed energy and sagacity.”<br/>Sherlock Holmes listened with closed eyes and fingertips together to this remarkable account.<br/>“The case has certainly some points of interest,” said he, in his languid fashion. “May I ask, in the first place, Mr. McFarlane, how it is that you are still at liberty, since there appears to be enough evidence to justify your arrest?”<br/>“I live at Torrington Lodge, Blackheath, with my parents, Mr. Holmes, but last night, having to do business very late with Mr. Jonas Oldacre, I stayed at a hotel in Norwood, and came to my business from there. I knew nothing of this affair until I was in the train, when I read what you have just heard. I at once saw the horrible danger of my position, and I hurried to put the case into your hands. I have no doubt that I should have been arrested either at my city office or at my home. A man followed me from London Bridge Station, and I have no doubt—Great heaven! what is that?”<br/>It was a clang of the bell, followed instantly by heavy steps upon the stair. A moment later, our old friend Lestrade appeared in the doorway. Over his shoulder I caught a glimpse of one or two uniformed policemen outside.<br/>“Mr. John Hector McFarlane?” said Lestrade.<br/>Our unfortunate client rose with a ghastly face.<br/>“I arrest you for the willful murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood.”<br/>McFarlane turned to us with a gesture of despair, and sank into his chair once more like one who is crushed.<br/>“One moment, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “Half an hour more or less can make no difference to you, and the gentleman was about to give us an account of this very interesting affair, which might aid us in clearing it up.”<br/>“I think there will be no difficulty in clearing it up,” said Lestrade, grimly.<br/>“None the less, with your permission, I should be much interested to hear his account.”<br/>“Well, Mr. Holmes, it is difficult for me to refuse you anything, for you have been of use to the force once or twice in the past, and we owe you a good turn at Scotland Yard,” said Lestrade. “At the same time, I must remain with my prisoner, and I am bound to warn him that anything he may say will appear in evidence against him.”<br/>“I wish nothing better,” said our client. “All I ask is that you should hear and recognize the absolute truth.”<br/>Lestrade looked at his watch. “I’ll give you half an hour,” said he.<br/>“I must explain first,” said McFarlane, “that I knew nothing of Mr. Jonas Oldacre. His name was familiar to me, for many years ago my parents were acquainted with him, but they drifted apart. I was very much surprised therefore, when yesterday, about three o’clock in the afternoon, he walked into my office in the city. But I was still more astonished when he told me the object of his visit. He had in his hand several sheets of a notebook, covered with scribbled writing—here they are—and he laid them on my table.<br/>“‘Here is my will,’ said he. ‘I want you, Mr. McFarlane, to cast it into proper legal shape. I will sit here while you do so.’<br/>“I set myself to copy it, and you can imagine my astonishment when I found that, with some reservations, he had left all his property to me. He was a strange little ferret-like man, with white eyelashes, and when I looked up at him, I found his keen grey eyes fixed upon me with an amused expression. I could hardly believe my own as I read the terms of the will; but he explained that he was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are the rough draft. Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there were a number of documents—building leases, title-deeds, mortgages, scrip, and so forth—which it was necessary that I should see and understand. He said that his mind would not be easy until the whole thing was settled, and he begged me to come out to his house at Norwood that night, bringing the will with me, and to arrange matters. ‘Remember, my boy, not one word to your parents about the affair until everything is settled. We will keep it as a little surprise for them.’ He was very insistent upon this point, and made me promise it faithfully.<br/>“You can imagine, Mr. Holmes, that I was not in a humour to refuse him anything that he might ask. He was my benefactor, and all my desire was to carry out his wishes in every particular. I sent a telegram home, therefore, to say that I had important business on hand, and that it was impossible for me to say how late I might be. Mr. Oldacre had told me that he would like me to have supper with him at nine, as he might not be home before that hour. I had some difficulty in finding his house, however, and it was nearly half-past before I reached it. I found him——”<br/>“One moment!” said Holmes. “Who opened the door?”<br/>“A middle-aged woman, who was, I suppose, his housekeeper.”<br/>“And it was she, I presume, who mentioned your name?”<br/>“Exactly,” said McFarlane.<br/>“Pray proceed.”<br/>McFarlane wiped his damp brow, and then continued his narrative:<br/>“I was shown by this woman into a sitting-room, where a frugal supper was laid out. Afterwards, Mr. Jonas Oldacre led me into his bedroom, in which there stood a heavy safe. This he opened and took out a mass of documents, which we went over together. It was between eleven and twelve when we finished. He remarked that we must not disturb the housekeeper. He showed me out through his own French window, which had been open all this time.”<br/>“Was the blind down?” asked Holmes.<br/>“I will not be sure, but I believe that it was only half down. Yes, I remember how he pulled it up in order to swing open the window. I could not find my stick, and he said, ‘Never mind, my boy, I shall see a good deal of you now, I hope, and I will keep your stick until you come back to claim it.’ I left him there, the safe open, and the papers made up in packets upon the table. It was so late that I could not get back to Blackheath, so I spent the night at the Anerley Arms, and I knew nothing more until I read of this horrible affair in the morning.”<br/>“Anything more that you would like to ask, Mr. Holmes?” said Lestrade, whose eyebrows had gone up once or twice during this remarkable explanation.<br/>“Not until I have been to Blackheath.”<br/>“You mean to Norwood,” said Lestrade.<br/>“Oh, yes, no doubt that is what I must have meant,” said Holmes, with his enigmatical smile. Lestrade had learned by more experiences than he would care to acknowledge that that brain could cut through that which was impenetrable to him. I saw him look curiously at my companion.<br/>“I think I should like to have a word with you presently, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said he. “Now, Mr. McFarlane, two of my constables are at the door, and there is a four-wheeler waiting.” The wretched young man arose, and with a last beseeching glance at us walked from the room. The officers conducted him to the cab, but Lestrade remained.<br/>Holmes had picked up the pages which formed the rough draft of the will, and was looking at them with the keenest interest upon his face.<br/>“There are some points about that document, Lestrade, are there not?” said he, pushing them over.<br/>The official looked at them with a puzzled expression.<br/>“I can read the first few lines and these in the middle of the second page, and one or two at the end. Those are as clear as print,” said he, “but the writing in between is very bad, and there are three places where I cannot read it at all.”<br/>“What do you make of that?” said Holmes.<br/>“Well, what do you make of it?”<br/>“That it was written in a train. The good writing represents stations, the bad writing movement, and the very bad writing passing over points. A scientific expert would pronounce at once that this was drawn up on a suburban line, since nowhere save in the immediate vicinity of a great city could there be so quick a succession of points. Granting that his whole journey was occupied in drawing up the will, then the train was an express, only stopping once between Norwood and London Bridge.”<br/>Lestrade began to laugh.<br/>“You are too many for me when you begin to get on your theories, Mr. Holmes,” said he. “How does this bear on the case?”<br/>“Well, it corroborates the young man’s story to the extent that the will was drawn up by Jonas Oldacre in his journey yesterday. It is curious—is it not? —that a man should draw up so important a document in so haphazard a fashion. It suggests that he did not think it was going to be of much practical importance. If a man drew up a will which he did not intend ever to be effective, he might do it so.”<br/>“Well, he drew up his own death warrant at the same time,” said Lestrade.<br/>“Oh, you think so?”<br/>“Don’t you?”<br/>“Well, it is quite possible, but the case is not clear to me yet.”<br/>“Not clear? Well, if that isn’t clear, what could be clearer? Here is a young man who learns suddenly that, if a certain older man dies, he will succeed to a fortune. What does he do? He says nothing to anyone, but he arranges that he shall go out on some pretext to see his client that night. He waits until the only other person in the house is in bed, and then in the solitude of a man’s room he murders him, burns his body in the wood-pile, and departs to a neighbouring hotel. The blood-stains in the room and also on the stick are very slight. It is probable that he imagined his crime to be a bloodless one, and hoped that if the body were consumed it would hide all traces of the method of his death—traces which, for some reason, must have pointed to him. Is not all this obvious?”<br/>“It strikes me, my good Lestrade, as being just a trifle too obvious,” said Holmes. “You do not add imagination to your other great qualities, but if you could for one moment put yourself in the place of this young man, would you choose the very night after the will had been made to commit your crime? Would it not seem dangerous to you to make so very close a relation between the two incidents? Again, would you choose an occasion when you are known to be in the house, when a servant has let you in? And, finally, would you take the great pains to conceal the body, and yet leave your own stick as a sign that you were the criminal? Confess, Lestrade, that all this is very unlikely.”<br/>“As to the stick, Mr. Holmes, you know as well as I do that a criminal is often flurried, and does such things, which a cool man would avoid. He was very likely afraid to go back to the room. Give me another theory that would fit the facts.”<br/>“I could very easily give you half a dozen,” said Holmes. “Here for example, is a very possible and even probable one. I make you a free present of it. The older man is showing documents which are of evident value. A passing tramp sees them through the window, the blind of which is only half down. Exit the solicitor. Enter the tramp! He seizes a stick, which he observes there, kills Oldacre, and departs after burning the body.”<br/>“Why should the tramp burn the body?”<br/>“For the matter of that, why should McFarlane?”<br/>“To hide some evidence.”<br/>“Possibly the tramp wanted to hide that any murder at all had been committed.”<br/>“And why did the tramp take nothing?”<br/>“Because they were papers that he could not negotiate.”<br/>Lestrade shook his head, though it seemed to me that his manner was less absolutely assured than before.<br/>“Well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you may look for your tramp, and while you are finding him, we will hold on to our man. The future will show which is right. Just notice this point, Mr. Holmes: that so far as we know, none of the papers were removed, and that the prisoner is the one man in the world who had no reason for removing them, since he was heir-at-law, and would come into them in any case.”<br/>My friend seemed struck by this remark.<br/>“I don’t mean to deny that the evidence is in some ways very strongly in favour of your theory,” said he. “I only wish to point out that there are other theories possible. As you say, the future will decide. Good-morning! I dare say that in the course of the day I shall drop in at Norwood and see how you are getting on.”<br/>When the detective departed, my friend rose and made his preparations for the day’s work with the alert air of a man who has a congenial task before him.<br/>“My first movement Watson,” said he, as he bustled into his frockcoat, “must, as I said, be in the direction of Blackheath.”<br/>“And why not Norwood?”<br/>“Because we have in this case one singular incident coming close to the heels of another singular incident. The police are making the mistake of concentrating their attention upon the second, because it happens to be the one which is actually criminal. But it is evident to me that the logical way to approach the case is to begin by trying to throw some light upon the first incident—the curious will, so suddenly made, and to so unexpected an heir. It may do something to simplify what followed. No, my dear fellow, I don’t think you can help me. There is no prospect of danger, or I should not dream of stirring out without you. I trust that when I see you in the evening, I will be able to report that I have been able to do something for this unfortunate youngster, who has thrown himself upon my protection.” With that, he said goodbye to his wife and left.<br/>It was late when Molly telegrammed that my friend had returned, and I could see when I arrived, by one glance at his haggard and anxious face, that the high hopes with which he had started had not been fulfilled. He was droning away upon his violin, endeavouring to soothe his own ruffled spirits. At last he flung down the instrument, and plunged into a detailed account of his misadventures.<br/>“It’s all going wrong—all as wrong as it can go. I kept a bold face before Lestrade, but, upon my soul, I believe that for once the fellow is on the right track and we are on the wrong. All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade’s facts.”<br/>“Did you go to Blackheath?” I asked.<br/>“Yes, Watson, I went there, and I found very quickly that the late lamented Oldacre was a pretty considerable blackguard. The father was away in search of his son. The mother was at home—a little, fluffy, blue-eyed person, in a tremor of fear and indignation. Of course, she would not admit even the possibility of his guilt. But she would not express either surprise or regret over the fate of Oldacre. On the contrary, she spoke of him with such bitterness that she was unconsciously considerably strengthening the case of the police for, of course, if her son had heard her speak of the man in this fashion, it would predispose him towards hatred and violence. ‘He was more like a malignant and cunning ape than a human being,’ said she, ‘and he always was, ever since he was a young man.’<br/>“‘You knew him at that time?’ said I.<br/>“‘Yes, I knew him well, in fact, he was an old suitor of mine. Thank heaven that I had the sense to turn away from him and to marry a better, if poorer, man. I was engaged to him, Mr. Holmes, when I heard a shocking story of how he had turned a cat loose in an aviary, and I was so horrified at his brutal cruelty that I would have nothing more to do with him.’ She rummaged in a bureau, and presently she produced a photograph of a woman, shamefully defaced and mutilated with a knife. ‘That is my own photograph,’ she said. ‘He sent it to me in that state, with his curse, upon my wedding morning.’<br/>“‘Well,’ said I, ‘at least he has forgiven you now, since he has left all his property to your son.’<br/>“‘Neither my son nor I want anything from Jonas Oldacre, dead or alive!’ she cried, with a proper spirit. ‘There is a God in heaven, Mr. Holmes, and that same God who has punished that wicked man will show, in His own good time, that my son’s hands are guiltless of his blood.’<br/>“Well, I tried one or two leads, but could get at nothing which would help our hypothesis, and several points which would make against it. I gave it up at last and off I went to Norwood.<br/>“This place, Deep Dene House, is a big modern villa of staring brick, standing back in its own grounds, with a laurel-clumped lawn in front of it. To the right and some distance back from the road was the timber-yard which had been the scene of the fire. Here’s a rough plan on a leaf of my notebook. This window on the left is the one which opens into Oldacre’s room. You can look into it from the road, you see. That is about the only bit of consolation I have had to-day. Lestrade was not there, but his head constable did the honours. They had just found a great treasure-trove. They had spent the morning raking among the ashes of the burned wood-pile, and besides the charred organic remains they had secured several discoloured metal discs. I examined them with care, and there was no doubt that they were trouser buttons. I even distinguished that one of them was marked with the name of ‘Hyams,’ who was Oldacre’s tailor. I then worked the lawn very carefully for signs and traces, but this drought has made everything as hard as iron. Nothing was to be seen save that somebody or bundle had been dragged through a low privet hedge which is in a line with the wood-pile. All that, of course, fits in with the official theory. I crawled about the lawn with an August sun on my back, but I got up at the end of an hour no wiser than before.<br/>“Well, after this fiasco I went into the bedroom and examined that also. The blood-stains were very slight, mere smears and discolourations, but undoubtedly fresh. The stick had been removed, but there also the marks were slight. There is no doubt about the stick belonging to our client. He admits it. Footmarks of both men could be made out on the carpet, but none of any third person, which again is a trick for the other side. They were piling up their score all the time and we were at a standstill.<br/>“Only one little gleam of hope did I get—and yet it amounted to nothing. I examined the contents of the safe, most of which had been taken out and left on the table. The papers had been made up into sealed envelopes, one or two of which had been opened by the police. They were not, so far as I could judge, of any great value, nor did the bank-book show that Mr. Oldacre was in such very affluent circumstances. But it seemed to me that all the papers were not there. There were allusions to some deeds—possibly the more valuable—which I could not find. This, of course, if we could definitely prove it, would turn Lestrade’s argument against himself, for who would steal a thing if he knew that he would shortly inherit it?<br/>“Finally, having drawn every other cover and picked up no scent, I tried my luck with the housekeeper. Mrs. Lexington is her name—a little, dark, silent person, with suspicious and sidelong eyes. She could tell us something if she would—I am convinced of it. But she was as close as wax. Yes, she had let Mr. McFarlane in at half-past nine. She wished her hand had withered before she had done so. She had gone to bed at half-past ten. Her room was at the other end of the house, and she could hear nothing of what had passed. Mr. McFarlane had left his hat, and to the best of her belief his stick, in the hall. She had been awakened by the alarm of fire. Her poor, dear master had certainly been murdered. Had he any enemies? Well, every man had enemies, but Mr. Oldacre kept himself very much to himself, and only met people in the way of business. She had seen the buttons, and was sure that they belonged to the clothes which he had worn last night. The wood-pile was very dry, for it had not rained for a month. It burned like tinder, and by the time she reached the spot, nothing could be seen but flames. She and all the firemen smelled the burned flesh from inside it. She knew nothing of the papers, nor of Mr. Oldacre’s private affairs.<br/>“So, my dear Watson, there’s my report of a failure. And yet—and yet—” he clenched his thin hands in a paroxysm of conviction— “I know it’s all wrong. I feel it in my bones. There is something that has not come out, and that housekeeper knows it. There was a sort of sulky defiance in her eyes, which only goes with guilty knowledge. However, there’s no good talking any more about it, Watson; but unless some lucky chance comes our way, I fear that the Norwood Disappearance Case will not figure in that chronicle of our successes which I foresee that a patient public will sooner or later have to endure.”<br/>“Surely,” said I, “the man’s appearance would go far with any jury?”<br/>“That is a dangerous argument my dear Watson. You remember that terrible murderer, Bert Stevens, who wanted us to get him off in ’87? Was there ever a more mild-mannered, Sunday-school young man?”<br/>“It is true.”<br/>“Unless we succeed in establishing an alternative theory, this man is lost. You can hardly find a flaw in the case which can now be presented against him, and all further investigation has served to strengthen it. By the way, there is one curious little point about those papers which may serve us as the starting-point for an inquiry. On looking over the bank-book I found that the low state of the balance was principally due to large checks which have been made out during the last year to Mr. Cornelius. I confess that I should be interested to know who this Mr. Cornelius may be with whom a retired builder has such very large transactions. Is it possible that he has had a hand in the affair? Cornelius might be a broker, but we have found no scrip to correspond with these large payments. Failing any other indication, my researches must now take the direction of an inquiry at the bank for the gentleman who has cashed these checks. But I fear, my dear fellow, that our case will end ingloriously by Lestrade hanging our client, which will certainly be a triumph for Scotland Yard.”<br/>I do not know how far Sherlock Holmes took any sleep that night, but when I came the next day, I found him pale and harassed, his bright eyes the brighter for the dark shadows round them. The carpet round his chair was littered with cigarette-ends and with the early editions of the morning papers. An open telegram lay upon the table.<br/>“What do you think of this, Watson?” he asked, tossing it across.<br/>It was from Norwood, and ran as follows:<br/>Important fresh evidence to hand. McFarlane’s guilt definitely established. Advise you to abandon case. —LESTRADE.<br/>“This sounds serious,” said I.<br/>“It is Lestrade’s little cock-a-doodle of victory,” Holmes answered, with a bitter smile. “And yet it may be premature to abandon the case. After all, important fresh evidence is a two-edged thing, and may possibly cut in a very different direction to that which Lestrade imagines. We will go out together and see what we can do. I feel as if I shall need your company and your moral support today.”<br/>My friend waved away Molly’s attempt to get him to eat, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition. “At present I cannot spare energy and nerve force for digestion,” he would say in answer to my medical remonstrances and his wife’s concerns. <br/>At Norwood, a crowd of morbid sightseers were still gathered round Deep Dene House, which was just such a suburban villa as I had pictured. Within the gates Lestrade met us, his face flushed with victory, his manner grossly triumphant.<br/>“Well, Mr. Holmes, have you proved us to be wrong yet? Have you found your tramp?” he cried.<br/>“I have formed no conclusion whatever,” my companion answered.<br/>“But we formed ours yesterday, and now it proves to be correct, so you must acknowledge that we have been a little in front of you this time, Mr. Holmes.”<br/>“You certainly have the air of something unusual having occurred,” said Holmes.<br/>Lestrade laughed loudly.<br/>“You don’t like being beaten any more than the rest of us do,” said he. “A man can’t expect always to have it his own way, can he, Dr. Watson? Step this way, if you please, gentlemen, and I think I can convince you once for all that it was John McFarlane who did this crime.”<br/>He led us through the passage and out into a dark hall beyond.<br/>“This is where young McFarlane must have come out to get his hat after the crime was done,” said he. “Now look at this.” With dramatic suddenness he struck a match, and by its light exposed a stain of blood upon the whitewashed wall. As he held the match nearer, I saw that it was more than a stain. It was the well-marked print of a thumb.<br/>“Look at that with your magnifying glass, Mr. Holmes.”<br/>“Yes, I am doing so.”<br/>“You are aware that no two thumb-marks are alike?”<br/>“I have heard something of the kind.”<br/>“Well, then, will you please compare that print with this wax impression of young McFarlane’s right thumb, taken by my orders this morning?”<br/>As he held the waxen print close to the blood-stain, it did not take a magnifying glass to see that the two were undoubtedly from the same thumb. It was evident to me that our unfortunate client was lost.<br/>“That is final,” said Lestrade.<br/>“Yes, that is final,” I involuntarily echoed.<br/>“It is final,” said Holmes.<br/>Something in his tone caught my ear, and I turned to look at him. An extraordinary change had come over his face. It was writhing with inward merriment. His two eyes were shining like stars. It seemed to me that he was making desperate efforts to restrain a convulsive attack of laughter.<br/>“Dear me! Dear me!” he said at last. “Well, now, who would have thought it? And how deceptive appearances may be, to be sure! Such a nice young man to look at! It is a lesson to us not to trust our own judgment, is it not, Lestrade?”<br/>“Yes, some of us are a little too much inclined to be cock-sure, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade. The man’s insolence was maddening, but we could not resent it.<br/>“What a providential thing that this young man should press his right thumb against the wall in taking his hat from the peg! Such a very natural action, too, if you come to think of it.” Holmes was outwardly calm, but his whole body gave a wriggle of suppressed excitement as he spoke.<br/>“By the way, Lestrade, who made this remarkable discovery?”<br/>“It was the housekeeper, Mrs. Lexington, who drew the night constable’s attention to it.”<br/>“Where was the night constable?”<br/>“He remained on guard in the bedroom where the crime was committed, so as to see that nothing was touched.”<br/>“But why didn’t the police see this mark yesterday?”<br/>“Well, we had no particular reason to make a careful examination of the hall. Besides, it’s not in a very prominent place, as you see.”<br/>“No, no—of course not. I suppose there is no doubt that the mark was there yesterday?”<br/>Lestrade looked at Holmes as if he thought he was going out of his mind. I confess that I was myself surprised both at his hilarious manner and at his rather wild observation.<br/>“I don’t know whether you think that McFarlane came out of jail in the dead of the night in order to strengthen the evidence against himself,” said Lestrade. “I leave it to any expert in the world whether that is not the mark of his thumb.”<br/>“It is unquestionably the mark of his thumb.”<br/>“There, that’s enough,” said Lestrade. “I am a practical man, Mr. Holmes, and when I have got my evidence I come to my conclusions. If you have anything to say, you will find me writing my report in the sitting-room.”<br/>Holmes had recovered his equanimity, though I still seemed to detect gleams of amusement in his expression.<br/>“Dear me, this is a very sad development, Watson, is it not?” said he. “And yet there are singular points about it which hold out some hopes for our client.”<br/>“I am delighted to hear it,” said I, heartily. “I was afraid it was all up with him.”<br/>“I would hardly go so far as to say that, my dear Watson. The fact is that there is one really serious flaw in this evidence to which our friend attaches so much importance.”<br/>“Indeed, Holmes! What is it?”<br/>“Only this: that I know that that mark was not there when I examined the hall yesterday. And now, Watson, let us have a little stroll round in the sunshine.”<br/>With a confused brain, but with a heart into which some warmth of hope was returning, I accompanied my friend in a walk round the garden. Holmes took each face of the house in turn, and examined it with great interest. He then led the way inside, and went over the whole building from basement to attic. Most of the rooms were unfurnished, but none the less Holmes inspected them all minutely. Finally, on the top corridor, which ran outside three untenanted bedrooms, he again was seized with a spasm of merriment.<br/>“There are really some very unique features about this case, Watson,” said he. “I think it is time now that we took our friend Lestrade into our confidence. He has had his little smile at our expense, and perhaps we may do as much by him, if my reading of this problem proves to be correct. Yes, yes, I think I see how we should approach it.”<br/>The Scotland Yard inspector was still writing in the parlour when Holmes interrupted him.<br/>“I understood that you were writing a report of this case,” said he.<br/>“So, I am.”<br/>“Don’t you think it may be a little premature? I can’t help thinking that your evidence is not complete.”<br/>Lestrade knew my friend too well to disregard his words. He laid down his pen and looked curiously at him.<br/>“What do you mean, Mr. Holmes?”<br/>“Only that there is an important witness whom you have not seen.”<br/>“Can you produce him?”<br/>“I think I can.”<br/>“Then do so.”<br/>“I will do my best. How many constables have you?”<br/>“There are three within call.”<br/>“Excellent!” said Holmes. “May I ask if they are all large, able-bodied men with powerful voices?”<br/>“I have no doubt they are, though I fail to see what their voices have to do with it.”<br/>“Perhaps I can help you to see that and one or two other things as well,” said Holmes. “Kindly summon your men, and I will try.”<br/>Five minutes later, three policemen had assembled in the hall.<br/>“In the outhouse you will find a considerable quantity of straw,” said Holmes. “I will ask you to carry in two bundles of it. I think it will be of the greatest assistance in producing the witness whom I require. Thank you very much. I believe you have some matches in your pocket Watson. Now, Mr. Lestrade, I will ask you all to accompany me to the top landing.”<br/>As I have said, there was a broad corridor there, which ran outside three empty bedrooms. At one end of the corridor we were all marshalled by Sherlock Holmes, the constables grinning and Lestrade staring at my friend with amazement, expectation, and derision chasing each other across his features. Holmes stood before us with the air of a conjurer who is performing a trick.<br/>“Would you kindly send one of your constables for two buckets of water? Put the straw on the floor here, free from the wall on either side. Now I think that we are all ready.”<br/>Lestrade’s face had begun to grow red and angry. “I don’t know whether you are playing a game with us, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said he. “If you know anything, you can surely say it without all this tomfoolery.”<br/>“I assure you, my good Lestrade, that I have an excellent reason for everything that I do. You may possibly remember that you chaffed me a little, some hours ago, when the sun seemed on your side of the hedge, so you must not grudge me a little pomp and ceremony now. Might I ask you, Watson, to open that window, and then to put a match to the edge of the straw?”<br/>I did so, and driven by the draught a coil of grey smoke swirled down the corridor, while the dry straw crackled and flamed.<br/>“Now we must see if we can find this witness for you, Lestrade. Might I ask you all to join in the cry of ‘Fire!’? Now then; one, two, three——”<br/>“Fire!” we all yelled.<br/>“Thank you. I will trouble you once again.”<br/>“Fire!”<br/>“Just once more, gentlemen, and all together.”<br/>“Fire!” The shout must have rung over Norwood.<br/>It had hardly died away when an amazing thing happened. A door suddenly flew open out of what appeared to be solid wall at the end of the corridor, and a little, wizened man darted out of it, like a rabbit out of its burrow.<br/>“Capital!” said Holmes, calmly. “Watson, a bucket of water over the straw. That will do! Lestrade, allow me to present you with your principal missing witness, Mr. Jonas Oldacre.”<br/>The detective stared at the newcomer with blank amazement. The latter was blinking in the bright light of the corridor, and peering at us and at the smouldering fire. It was an odious face—crafty, vicious, malignant, with shifty, light-grey eyes and white lashes.<br/>“What’s this, then?” said Lestrade, at last. “What have you been doing all this time, eh?”<br/>Oldacre gave an uneasy laugh, shrinking back from the furious red face of the angry detective.<br/>“I have done no harm.”<br/>“No harm? You have done your best to get an innocent man hanged. If it wasn’t for this gentleman here, I am not sure that you would not have succeeded.”<br/>The wretched creature began to whimper.<br/>“I am sure, sir, it was only my practical joke.”<br/>“Oh! a joke, was it? You won’t find the laugh on your side, I promise you. Take him down, and keep him in the sitting-room until I come. Mr. Holmes,” he continued, when they had gone, “I could not speak before the constables, but I don’t mind saying, in the presence of Dr. Watson, that this is the brightest thing that you have done yet, though it is a mystery to me how you did it. You have saved an innocent man’s life, and you have prevented a very grave scandal, which would have ruined my reputation in the Force.”<br/>Holmes smiled, and clapped Lestrade upon the shoulder.<br/>“Instead of being ruined, my good sir, you will find that your reputation has been enormously enhanced. Just make a few alterations in that report which you were writing, and they will understand how hard it is to throw dust in the eyes of Inspector Lestrade.”<br/>“And you don’t want your name to appear?”<br/>“Not at all. The work is its own reward. Perhaps I shall get the credit also at some distant day, when I permit my zealous historian to lay out his foolscap once more—eh, Watson? Well, now, let us see where this rat has been lurking.”<br/>A lath-and-plaster partition had been run across the passage six feet from the end, with a door cunningly concealed in it. It was lit within by slits under the eaves. A few articles of furniture and a supply of food and water were within, together with a number of books and papers.<br/>“There’s the advantage of being a builder,” said Holmes, as we came out. “He was able to fix up his own little hiding-place without any confederate—save, of course, that precious housekeeper of his, whom I should lose no time in adding to your bag, Lestrade.”<br/>“I’ll take your advice. But how did you know of this place, Mr. Holmes?”<br/>“I made up my mind that the fellow was in hiding in the house. When I paced one corridor and found it six feet shorter than the corresponding one below, it was pretty clear where he was. I thought he had not the nerve to lie quiet before an alarm of fire. We could, of course, have gone in and taken him, but it amused me to make him reveal himself. Besides, I owed you a little mystification, Lestrade, for your chaff in the morning.”<br/>“Well, sir, you certainly got equal with me on that. But how in the world did you know that he was in the house at all?”<br/>“The thumb-mark, Lestrade. You said it was final; and so, it was, in a very different sense. I knew it had not been there the day before. I pay a good deal of attention to matters of detail, as you may have observed, and I had examined the hall, and was sure that the wall was clear. Therefore, it had been put on during the night.”<br/>“But how?”<br/>“Very simply. When those packets were sealed up, Jonas Oldacre got McFarlane to secure one of the seals by putting his thumb upon the soft wax. It would be done so quickly and so naturally, that I daresay the young man himself has no recollection of it. Very likely it just so happened, and Oldacre had himself no notion of the use he would put it to. Brooding over the case in that den of his, it suddenly struck him what absolutely damning evidence he could make against McFarlane by using that thumb-mark. It was the simplest thing in the world for him to take a wax impression from the seal, to moisten it in as much blood as he could get from a pin-prick, and to put the mark upon the wall during the night, either with his own hand or with that of his housekeeper. If you examine among those documents which he took with him into his retreat, I will lay you a wager that you find the seal with the thumb-mark upon it.”<br/>“Wonderful!” said Lestrade. “Wonderful! It’s all as clear as crystal, as you put it. But what is the object of this deep deception, Mr. Holmes?”<br/>It was amusing to me to see how the detective’s overbearing manner had changed suddenly to that of a child asking questions of its teacher.<br/>“Well, I don’t think that is very hard to explain. A very deep, malicious, vindictive person is the gentleman who is now waiting us downstairs. You know that he was once refused by McFarlane’s mother? You don’t! I told you that you should go to Blackheath first and Norwood afterwards. Well, this injury, as he would consider it, has rankled in his wicked, scheming brain, and all his life he has longed for vengeance, but never seen his chance. During the last year or two, things have gone against him—secret speculation, I think—and he finds himself in a bad way. He determines to swindle his creditors, and for this purpose he pays large checks to a certain Mr. Cornelius, who is, I imagine, himself under another name. I have not traced these checks yet, but I have no doubt that they were banked under that name at some provincial town where Oldacre from time to time led a double existence. He intended to change his name altogether, draw this money, and vanish, starting life again elsewhere.”<br/>“Well, that’s likely enough.”<br/>“It would strike him that in disappearing he might throw all pursuit off his track, and at the same time have an ample and crushing revenge upon his old sweetheart, if he could give the impression that he had been murdered by her only child. It was a masterpiece of villainy, and he carried it out like a master. The idea of the will, which would give an obvious motive for the crime, the secret visit unknown to his own parents, the retention of the stick, the blood, and the animal remains and buttons in the wood-pile, all were admirable. It was a net from which it seemed to me, a few hours ago, that there was no possible escape. But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop. He wished to improve that which was already perfect—to draw the rope tighter yet round the neck of his unfortunate victim—and so he ruined all. Let us descend, Lestrade. There are just one or two questions that I would ask him.”<br/>The malignant creature was seated in his own parlour, with a policeman upon each side of him.<br/>“It was a joke, my good sir—a practical joke, nothing more,” he whined incessantly. “I assure you, sir, that I simply concealed myself in order to see the effect of my disappearance, and I am sure that you would not be so unjust as to imagine that I would have allowed any harm to befall poor young Mr. McFarlane.”<br/>“That’s for a jury to decide,” said Lestrade. “Anyhow, we shall have you on a charge of conspiracy, if not for attempted murder.”<br/>“And you’ll probably find that your creditors will impound the banking account of Mr. Cornelius,” said Holmes.<br/>The little man started, and turned his malignant eyes upon my friend.<br/>“I have to thank you for a good deal,” said he. “Perhaps I’ll pay my debt someday.”<br/>Holmes smiled indulgently.<br/>“I fancy that, for some few years, you will find your time very fully occupied,” said he. “By the way, what was it you put into the wood-pile besides your old trousers? A dead dog, or rabbits, or what? You won’t tell? Dear me, how very unkind of you! Well, well, I daresay that a couple of rabbits would account both for the blood and for the charred ashes. If ever you write an account, Watson, you can make rabbits serve your turn.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Yeah, Molly was pregnant for the entirety of the last chapter, she just didn’t know yet ;). The case Molly solved was inspired by the news that they recently cracked the Zodiac killer’s cipher.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was no very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, to look in upon 221B of an evening, and his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes, for they enabled him to keep in touch with all that was going on at the police headquarters. In return for the news which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was always ready to listen with attention to the details of any case upon which the detective was engaged, and was able occasionally, without any active interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from his own vast knowledge and experience.<br/>
It was an unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade to look in upon my home.<br/>
“Well, there is something on my mind that is more along your line of work than mine, Dr. Watson.”<br/>
“Disease?” said I.<br/>
“Madness, anyhow. And a queer madness, too. You wouldn’t think there was anyone living at this time of day who had such a hatred of Napoleon the First that he would break any image of him that he could see. But then, when the man commits burglary in order to break images which are not his own, that brings it away from the doctor and on to the policeman.”<br/>
Molly Holmes, who had been staying with my wife and I, said, “Burglary! This interesting. Let us hear the details.”<br/>
Lestrade took out his official notebook and refreshed his memory from its pages.<br/>
“The first case reported was four days ago,” said he. “It was at the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road. The assistant had left the front shop for an instant, when he heard a crash, and hurrying in he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments. He rushed out into the road, but, although several passers-by declared that they had noticed a man run out of the shop, he could neither see anyone nor could he find any means of identifying the rascal. It seemed to be one of those senseless acts of hooliganism which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the constable on the beat as such. The plaster cast was not worth more than a few shillings, and the whole affair appeared to be too childish for any particular investigation.<br/>
“The second case, however, was more serious, and also more singular. It occurred only last night.<br/>
“In Kennington Road, and within a few hundred yards of Morse Hudson’s shop, there lives a well-known medical practitioner, named Dr. Barnicot, who has one of the largest practices upon the south side of the Thames. His residence and principal consulting-room is at Kennington Road, but he has a branch surgery and dispensary at Lower Brixton Road, two miles away. This Dr. Barnicot is an enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon, and his house is full of books, pictures, and relics of the French Emperor. Some little time ago he purchased from Morse Hudson two duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon by the French sculptor, Devine. One of these he placed in his hall in the house at Kennington Road, and the other on the mantelpiece of the surgery at Lower Brixton. Well, when Dr. Barnicot came down this morning he was astonished to find that his house had been burgled during the night, but that nothing had been taken save the plaster head from the hall. It had been carried out and had been dashed savagely against the garden wall, under which its splintered fragments were discovered.”<br/>
“This is certainly very novel,” said Molly.<br/>
“I am glad it pleases you. But I have not got to the end yet. Dr. Barnicot was due at his surgery at twelve o’clock, and you can imagine his amazement when, on arriving there, he found that the window had been opened in the night and that the broken pieces of his second bust were strewn all over the room. It had been smashed to atoms where it stood. In neither case were there any signs which could give us a clue as to the criminal or lunatic who had done the mischief.”<br/>
“They are singular, not to say grotesque,” said I.<br/>
“May I ask,” asked Molly, “whether the two busts smashed in Dr. Barnicot’s rooms were the exact duplicates of the one which was destroyed in Morse Hudson’s shop?”<br/>
“They were taken from the same mould.”<br/>
“Such a fact must tell against the theory that the man who breaks them is influenced by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering how many hundreds of statues of the great Emperor must exist in London, it is too much to suppose such a coincidence as that a promiscuous iconoclast should chance to begin upon three specimens of the same bust.”<br/>
“Well, I thought as you do,” said Lestrade. “On the other hand, this Morse Hudson is the purveyor of busts in that part of London, and these three were the only ones which had been in his shop for years. So, although, as you say, there are many hundreds of statues in London, it is very probable that these three were the only ones in that district. Therefore, a local fanatic would begin with them. What do you think, Dr. Watson?”<br/>
“There are no limits to the possibilities of monomania,” I answered. “There is the condition which the modern French psychologists have called the idée fixe, which may be trifling in character, and accompanied by complete sanity in every other way. A man who had read deeply about Napoleon, or who had possibly received some hereditary family injury through the great war, might conceivably form such an idée fixe and under its influence be capable of any fantastic outrage.”<br/>
“That won’t do,” said Molly, shaking her head, “for no amount of idée fixe would enable your interesting monomaniac to find out where these busts were situated.”<br/>
“Well, how do you explain it?” challenged Mary.<br/>
“I don’t attempt to do so. I would only observe that there is a certain method in the gentleman’s eccentric proceedings. For example, in Dr. Barnicot’s hall, where a sound might arouse the family, the bust was taken outside before being broken, whereas in the surgery, where there was less danger of an alarm, it was smashed where it stood. The affair seems absurdly trifling, but also very interesting. Mr. Lestrade, I shall be very much obliged to you if you will let me hear of any fresh development of so singular a chain of events.”<br/>
Lestrade hesitated, but saw the look on mine and Mary’s face and quickly assured Molly that he would ask for her assistance. I walked Lestrade out.<br/>
“This cannot truly be because she is so interested in this silly little case, can it?”<br/>
“No, I believe she truly is interested. But you would be right to think that there is likely more to it. But what harm can it do?”<br/>
“Well, she does have a child.”<br/>
“I actually think this could be the best thing for Basil. As one would expect, he is a very intuitive child, and he knows that his mother would be upset. If anything, Molly taking on a case would give him a sense of normalcy. Besides, Rosamunde loves it when Mary takes over Basil’s lessons, she gets to play assistant.”<br/>
The next morning Molly received a telegram that read, “Come instantly, 131, Pitt Street, Kensington. —LESTRADE.”<br/>
In half an hour we had reached Pitt Street, a quiet little backwater just beside one of the briskest currents of London life. No. 131 was one of a row, all flat-chested, respectable, and most unromantic dwellings. As we drove up, we found the railings in front of the house lined by a curious crowd. I whistled.<br/>
“By George! It’s attempted murder at the least. Nothing less will hold the London message-boy. You will stay close to me, Molly? Don’t look at me like that, it is a matter of my own safety should I return to Mary without you. Well, well, there’s Lestrade at the front window, and we shall soon know all about it.”<br/>
The official received us with a very grave face and showed us into a sitting-room, where an exceedingly unkempt and agitated elderly man, clad in a flannel dressing-gown, was pacing up and down. He was introduced to us as the owner of the house—Mr. Horace Harker, of the Central Press Syndicate.<br/>
“The Napoleon bust business has taken a very much graver turn,” said Lestrade.<br/>
“What has it turned to, then?”<br/>
“To murder. Mr. Harker, will you tell this gentleman and lady exactly what has occurred?”<br/>
The man in the dressing-gown turned upon us with a most melancholy face. “It’s an extraordinary thing,” said he, “that all my life I have been collecting other people’s news, and now that a real piece of news has come my own way I am so confused and bothered that I can’t put two words together. If I had come in here as a journalist, I should have interviewed myself and had two columns in every evening paper. As it is, I am giving away valuable copy by telling my story over and over to a string of different people, and I can make no use of it myself. However, I know who you are, Dr. Watson and Mrs. Holmes, and if you’ll only explain this queer business, I shall be paid for my trouble in telling you the story.”<br/>
Molly and I sat down and listened.<br/>
“It all seems to centre round that bust of Napoleon which I bought for this very room about four months ago. I picked it up cheap from Harding Brothers, two doors from the High Street Station. A great deal of my journalistic work is done at night, and I often write until the early morning. So, it was today. I was sitting in my den, which is at the back of the top of the house, about three o’clock, when I was convinced that I heard some sounds downstairs. I listened, but they were not repeated, and I concluded that they came from outside. Then suddenly, about five minutes later, there came a most horrible yell—the most dreadful sound that ever I heard. It will ring in my ears as long as I live. I sat frozen with horror for a minute or two. Then I seized the poker and went downstairs. When I entered this room, I found the window wide open, and I at once observed that the bust was gone from the mantelpiece. Why any burglar should take such a thing passes my understanding, for it was only a plaster cast and of no real value whatever.<br/>
“You can see for yourself that anyone going out through that open window could reach the front doorstep by taking a long stride. This was clearly what the burglar had done, so I went round and opened the door. Stepping out into the dark, I nearly fell over a dead man, who was lying there. I ran back for a light and there was the poor fellow, a great gash in his throat and the whole place swimming in blood. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up, and his mouth horribly open. I shall see him in my dreams. I had just time to blow on my police-whistle, and then I must have fainted, for I knew nothing more until I found the policeman standing over me in the hall.”<br/>
“Well, who was the murdered man?” I asked.<br/>
“There’s nothing to show who he was,” said Lestrade. “You shall see the body at the mortuary, but we have made nothing of it up to now. He is a tall man, sunburned, very powerful, not more than thirty. He is poorly dressed, and yet does not appear to be a labourer. A horn-handled clasp knife was lying in a pool of blood beside him. Whether it was the weapon which did the deed, or whether it belonged to the dead man, I do not know. There was no name on his clothing, and nothing in his pockets save an apple, some string, a shilling map of London, and a photograph. Here it is.”<br/>
It was evidently taken by a snapshot from a small camera. It represented an alert, sharp-featured simian man, with thick eyebrows and a very peculiar projection of the lower part of the face, like the muzzle of a baboon.<br/>
“And what became of the bust?” asked Molly, after a careful study of this picture.<br/>
“We had news of it just before you came. It has been found in the front garden of an empty house in Campden House Road. It was broken into fragments. I am going round now to see it. Will you come?”<br/>
“Certainly. I must just take one look round.” Molly examined the carpet and the window. “The fellow had either very long legs or was a most active man,” said she. “With an area beneath, it was no mean feat to reach that window ledge and open that window. Getting back was comparatively simple. Are you coming with us to see the remains of your bust, Mr. Harker?”<br/>
The disconsolate journalist had seated himself at a writing-table.<br/>
“I must try and make something of it,” said he, “though I have no doubt that the first editions of the evening papers are out already with full details. It’s like my luck! You remember when the stand fell at Doncaster? Well, I was the only journalist in the stand, and my journal the only one that had no account of it, for I was too shaken to write it. And now I’ll be too late with a murder done on my own doorstep.”<br/>
As we left the room, we heard his pen travelling shrilly over the foolscap.<br/>
The spot where the fragments of the bust had been found was only a few hundred yards away. For the first time our eyes rested upon this presentment of the great emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic and destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown. It lay scattered, in splintered shards, upon the grass. Molly picked up several of them and examined them carefully. I was convinced, from her intent face and her purposeful manner, that at last she was upon a clue.<br/>
“Well?” asked Lestrade.<br/>
Molly shrugged her shoulders.<br/>
“We have a long way to go yet,” said she. “And yet—and yet—well, we have some suggestive facts to act upon. The possession of this trifling bust was worth more, in the eyes of this strange criminal, than a human life. That is one point. Then there is the singular fact that he did not break it in the house, or immediately outside the house, if to break it was his sole object.”<br/>
“He was rattled and bustled by meeting this other fellow. He hardly knew what he was doing.”<br/>
“Well, that’s likely enough. But I wish to call your attention very particularly to the position of this house, in the garden of which the bust was destroyed.”<br/>
Lestrade looked about him.<br/>
“It was an empty house, and so he knew that he would not be disturbed in the garden.”<br/>
“Yes, but there is another empty house farther up the street which he must have passed before he came to this one. Why did he not break it there, since it is evident that every yard that he carried it increased the risk of someone meeting him?”<br/>
“I give it up,” said Lestrade.<br/>
I suddenly knew what she was leading towards and pointed to the street lamp above our heads. “He could see what he was doing here, and he could not there. That was his reason.”<br/>
“By Jove! that’s true,” said the detective. “Now that I come to think of it, Dr. Barnicot’s bust was broken not far from his red lamp. Well, what are we to do with that fact?”<br/>
“To remember it—to docket it. We may come on something later which will bear upon it. What steps do you propose to take now, Lestrade?”<br/>
“The most practical way of getting at it, in my opinion, is to identify the dead man. There should be no difficulty about that. When we have found who he is and who his associates are, we should have a good start in learning what he was doing in Pitt Street last night, and who it was who met him and killed him on the doorstep of Mr. Horace Harker. Don’t you think so?”<br/>
“No doubt; but I think that there is an additional way to approach the case,” said Molly.<br/>
“What would you do then?”<br/>
“Oh, you must not let me influence you in any way. I suggest that you go on your line and I on mine. We can compare notes afterwards, and each will supplement the other.”<br/>
“Very good,” said Lestrade.<br/>
“If you are going back to Pitt Street, you might see Mr. Horace Harker. Tell him for me that I have quite made up my mind, and that it is certain that a dangerous homicidal lunatic, with Napoleonic delusions, was in his house last night. It will be useful for his article.”<br/>
Lestrade stared.<br/>
“You don’t seriously believe that?”<br/>
Molly smiled, “Don’t I? Well, perhaps I don’t. But I am sure that it will interest Mr. Horace Harker and the subscribers of the Central Press Syndicate. Now,” she turned to me, “I think that we shall find that we have a long and rather complex day’s work before us. I should be glad, Lestrade, if you could make it convenient to meet us at six o’clock this evening. Until then I should like to keep this photograph, found in the dead man’s pocket. It is possible that I may have to ask your company and assistance upon a small expedition which will have be undertaken to-night, if my chain of reasoning should prove to be correct. Until then good-bye and good luck!”<br/>
We walked together to the High Street, where we stopped at the shop of Harding Brothers, whence the bust had been purchased. A young assistant informed us that Mr. Harding would be absent until afternoon, and that he was himself a newcomer, who could give us no information. Molly’s face showed her disappointment and annoyance.<br/>
“Well, well, we can’t expect to have it all our own way, Watson,” she said, “We must come back in the afternoon, if Mr. Harding will not be here until then. I am, as you have no doubt surmised, endeavouring to trace these busts to their source, in order to find if there is not something peculiar which may account for their remarkable fate. Let us make for Mr. Morse Hudson, of the Kennington Road, and see if he can throw any light upon the problem.”<br/>
A drive of an hour brought us to the picture-dealer’s establishment. He was a small, stout man with a red face and a peppery manner.<br/>
“Yes, sir. On my very counter, sir,” said he. “What we pay rates and taxes for I don’t know, when any ruffian can come in and break one’s goods. Yes, sir, it was I who sold Dr. Barnicot his two statues. Disgraceful, sir! A Nihilist plot—that’s what I make it. No one but an anarchist would go about breaking statues. Red republicans—that’s what I call ’em. Who did I get the statues from? I don’t see what that has to do with it. Well, if you really want to know, I got them from Gelder &amp; Co., in Church Street, Stepney. They are a well-known house in the trade, and have been these twenty years. How many had I? Three—two and one are three—two of Dr. Barnicot’s, and one smashed in broad daylight on my own counter. Do I know that photograph? No, I don’t. Yes, I do, though. Why, it’s Beppo. He was a kind of Italian piece-work man, who made himself useful in the shop. He could carve a bit, and gild and frame, and do odd jobs. The fellow left me last week, and I’ve heard nothing of him since. No, I don’t know where he came from nor where he went to. I had nothing against him while he was here. He was gone two days before the bust was smashed.”<br/>
“Well, that’s all we could reasonably expect from Morse Hudson,” said Molly, as we emerged from the shop. “We have this Beppo as a common factor, both in Kennington and in Kensington, so that is worth a ten-mile drive. Now, let us make for Gelder &amp; Co., of Stepney, the source and origin of the busts. I shall be surprised if we don’t get some help down there.”<br/>
In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally, maritime London, till we came to a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls, where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe. Here, in a broad thoroughfare, once the abode of wealthy City merchants, we found the sculpture works for which we searched. Outside was a considerable yard full of monumental masonry. Inside was a large room in which fifty workers were carving or moulding. The manager, a big blond German, received us civilly and gave a clear answer to all our questions. A reference to his books showed that hundreds of casts had been taken from a marble copy of Devine’s head of Napoleon, but that the three which had been sent to Morse Hudson a year or so before had been half of a batch of six, the other three being sent to Harding Brothers, of Kensington. There was no reason why those six should be different from any of the other casts. He could suggest no possible cause why anyone should wish to destroy them—in fact, he laughed at the idea. Their wholesale price was six shillings, but the retailer would get twelve or more. The cast was taken in two moulds from each side of the face, and then these two profiles of plaster of Paris were joined together to make the complete bust. The work was usually done by Italians, in the room we were in. When finished, the busts were put on a table in the passage to dry, and afterwards stored. That was all he could tell us.<br/>
But the production of the photograph had a remarkable effect upon the manager. His face flushed with anger, and his brows knotted over his blue Teutonic eyes.<br/>
“Ah, the rascal!” he cried. “Yes, indeed, I know him very well. This has always been a respectable establishment, and the only time that we have ever had the police in it was over this very fellow. It was more than a year ago now. He knifed another Italian in the street, and then he came to the works with the police on his heels, and he was taken here. Beppo was his name—his second name I never knew. Serve me right for engaging a man with such a face. But he was a good workman—one of the best.”<br/>
“What did he get?”<br/>
“The man lived and he got off with a year. I have no doubt he is out now, but he has not dared to show his nose here. We have a cousin of his here, and I daresay he could tell you where he is.”<br/>
“No, no,” cried Molly, “not a word to the cousin—not a word, I beg of you. The matter is very important, and the farther I go with it, the more important it seems to grow. When you referred in your ledger to the sale of those casts, I observed that the date was June 3rd of last year. Could you give me the date when Beppo was arrested?”<br/>
“I could tell you roughly by the pay-list,” the manager answered. “Yes,” he continued, after some turning over of pages, “he was paid last on May 20th.”<br/>
“Thank you,” said Molly. “I don’t think that I need intrude upon your time and patience anymore.” With a last word of caution that he should say nothing as to our researches, we turned our faces westward once more.<br/>
The afternoon was far advanced before we were able to snatch a hasty luncheon at a restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance announced “Kensington Outrage. Murder by a Madman,” and the contents of the paper showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his account into print after all. Two columns were occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident. Molly propped it against the cruet-stand and read it while he ate. Once or twice, she chuckled.<br/>
“This is all right,” said he. “Listen to this:<br/>
“It is satisfactory to know that there can be no difference of opinion upon this case, since Mr. Lestrade, one of the most experienced members of the official force, and Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known consulting expert, — you see he has used Sherlock’s name instead of mine, I can’t even be insulted that the man knows the difference between writing sensation and scandal—have each come to the conclusion that the grotesque series of incidents, which have ended in so tragic a fashion, arise from lunacy rather than from deliberate crime. No explanation save mental aberration can cover the facts.<br/>
“The Press, as you know, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it. And now, if you have quite finished, we will hark back to Kensington and see what the manager of Harding Brothers has to say on the matter.”<br/>
The founder of that great emporium proved to be a brisk, crisp little person, very dapper and quick, with a clear head and a ready tongue.<br/>
“Yes, sir, I have already read the account in the evening papers. Mr. Horace Harker is a customer of ours. We supplied him with the bust some months ago. We ordered three busts of that sort from Gelder &amp; Co., of Stepney. They are all sold now. To whom? Oh, I daresay by consulting our sales book we could very easily tell you. Yes, we have the entries here. One to Mr. Harker you see, and one to Mr. Josiah Brown, of Laburnum Lodge, Laburnum Vale, Chiswick, and one to Mr. Sandeford, of Lower Grove Road, Reading. No, I have never seen this face which you show me in the photograph. You would hardly forget it, would you, sir, for I’ve seldom seen an uglier. Have we any Italians on the staff? Yes, sir, we have several among our workpeople and cleaners. I daresay they might get a peep at that sales book if they wanted to. There is no particular reason for keeping a watch upon that book. Well, well, it’s a very strange business, and I hope that you will let me know if anything comes of your inquiries.”<br/>
I took several notes during Mr. Harding’s evidence, and I could see that Molly was thoroughly satisfied by the turn which affairs were taking. She made no remark, however, save that, unless we hurried, we should be late for our appointment with Lestrade. Sure enough, the detective was already at my home, as was the famous consulting-detective with Basil in his arms.<br/>
“I sent him a telegram,” I informed Molly. Basil was handed off to Mary, the Holmeses retreated to another room. Lestrade began pacing up and down in a fever of impatience for the two to come to an understanding, which they had when they emerged half an hour later.<br/>
“Well?” he asked. “What luck, Mrs. Holmes?”<br/>
“We have had a very busy day, and not entirely a wasted one,” my friend explained. “We have seen both the retailers and also the wholesale manufacturers. I can trace each of the busts now from the beginning.”<br/>
“The busts,” cried Lestrade. “Good. I have identified the dead man.”<br/>
“You don’t say so?”<br/>
“And found a cause for the crime.”<br/>
“Splendid!”<br/>
“We have an inspector who makes a specialty of Saffron Hill and the Italian Quarter. Well, this dead man had some Catholic emblem round his neck, and that, along with his colour, made me think he was from the South. Inspector Hill knew him the moment he caught sight of him. His name is Pietro Venucci, from Naples, and he is one of the greatest cut-throats in London. He is connected with the Mafia, which, as you know, is a secret political society, enforcing its decrees by murder. Now, you see how the affair begins to clear up. The other fellow is probably an Italian also, and a member of the Mafia. He has broken the rules in some fashion. Pietro is set upon his track. Probably the photograph we found in his pocket is the man himself, so that he may not knife the wrong person. He dogs the fellow, he sees him enter a house, he waits outside for him, and in the scuffle, he receives his own death-wound. How is that?”<br/>
Molly clapped his hands approvingly. “Excellent, Lestrade, excellent!” she cried. “But I didn’t quite follow your explanation of the destruction of the busts.”<br/>
“The busts! You never can get those busts out of your head. After all, that is nothing; petty larceny, six months at the most. It is the murder that we are really investigating, and I tell you that I am gathering all the threads into my hands.”<br/>
“And the next stage?”<br/>
“Is a very simple one. I shall go down with Hill to the Italian Quarter, find the man whose photograph we have got, and arrest him on the charge of murder. I assume Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes are coming with me?”<br/>
“I think not,” said Sherlock Holmes, seeming to have come up with a plan with his wife, “I fancy we can attain our end in a simpler way. I can’t say for certain, because it all depends—well, it all depends upon a factor which is completely outside our control. But I have great hopes—in fact, the betting is exactly two to one—that if you will come with us to-night I shall be able to help you to lay him by the heels.”<br/>
“In the Italian Quarter?”<br/>
“No, I fancy Chiswick is an address which is more likely to find him. If you will come with us to Chiswick to-night, Lestrade, I’ll promise to go to the Italian Quarter with you to-morrow, and no harm will be done by the delay. And now I think that a few hours’ rest would do us all good, for I do not propose to leave before eleven o’clock, and it is unlikely that we shall be back before morning. You’ll dine with us, Lestrade, and then you are welcome to the sofa until it is time for us to start. In the meantime, Watson, I should be glad if you would ring for an express messenger, for I have a letter to send and it is important that it should go at once.”<br/>
Mr. and Mrs. Holmes spent the evening in rummaging among the files of the old daily papers brought over from 221B. When at last they descended, it was with triumph in their eyes, but they said nothing as to the result of their researches. For my own part, I had followed step by step the methods by which we had traced the various windings of this complex case, and, though I could not yet perceive the goal which we would reach, I understood clearly that Molly expected this grotesque criminal to make an attempt upon the two remaining busts, one of which, I remembered, was at Chiswick. No doubt the object of our journey was to catch him in the very act, and I could not but admire the cunning with which my friend had inserted a wrong clue in the evening paper, so as to give the fellow the idea that he could continue his scheme with impunity. I was not surprised when Holmes suggested that I should take my revolver with me. The expectation of danger was why I sent for him in the first place. He had himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop, which was his favourite weapon.<br/>
A four-wheeler was at the door at eleven, and in it we drove to a spot at the other side of Hammersmith Bridge. Here the cabman was directed to wait. A short walk brought us to a secluded road fringed with pleasant houses, each standing in its own grounds. In the light of a street lamp, we read “Laburnum Villa” upon the gate-post of one of them. The occupants had evidently retired to rest, for all was dark save for a fanlight over the hall door, which shed a single blurred circle on to the garden path. The wooden fence which separated the grounds from the road threw a dense black shadow upon the inner side, and here it was that we crouched.<br/>
“I fear that you’ll have a long wait,” Holmes whispered. “We may thank our stars that it is not raining. I don’t think we can even venture to smoke to pass the time. However, it’s a two to one chance that we get something to pay us for our trouble.”<br/>
It proved, however, that our vigil was not to be so long as Holmes had led us to fear, and it ended in a very sudden and singular fashion. In an instant, without the least sound to warn us of his coming, the garden gate swung open, and a lithe, dark figure, as swift and active as an ape, rushed up the garden path. We saw it whisk past the light thrown from over the door and disappear against the black shadow of the house. There was a long pause, during which we held our breath, and then a very gentle creaking sound came to our ears. The window was being opened. The noise ceased, and again there was a long silence. The fellow was making his way into the house. We saw the sudden flash of a dark lantern inside the room. What he sought was evidently not there, for again we saw the flash through another blind, and then through another.<br/>
“Let us get to the open window. We will nab him as he climbs out,” Lestrade whispered.<br/>
But before we could move, the man had emerged again. As he came out into the glimmering patch of light, we saw that he carried something white under his arm. He looked stealthily all round him. The silence of the deserted street reassured him. Turning his back upon us he laid down his burden, and the next instant there was the sound of a sharp tap, followed by a clatter and rattle. The man was so intent upon what he was doing that he never heard our steps as we stole across the grass plot. With the bound of a tiger Holmes was on his back, and an instant later Lestrade and I had him by either wrist, and the handcuffs had been fastened. As we turned him over, I saw a hideous, sallow face, with writhing, furious features, glaring up at us, and I knew that it was indeed the man of the photograph whom we had secured.<br/>
But it was not our prisoner to whom Holmes was giving his attention. Squatted on the doorstep, he was engaged in most carefully examining that which the man had brought from the house. It was a bust of Napoleon, like the one which we had seen that morning, and it had been broken into similar fragments. Carefully Holmes held each separate shard to the light, but in no way did it differ from any other shattered piece of plaster. He had just completed his examination when the hall lights flew up, the door opened, and the owner of the house, a jovial, rotund figure in shirt and trousers, presented himself.<br/>
“Mr. Josiah Brown, I suppose?” said Holmes.<br/>
“Yes, sir; and you, no doubt, are Mr. Sherlock Holmes? I had the note which you sent by the express messenger, and I did exactly what you told me. We locked every door on the inside and awaited developments. Well, I’m very glad to see that you have got the rascal. I hope, gentlemen, that you will come in and have some refreshment.”<br/>
However, Lestrade was anxious to get his man into safe quarters, so within a few minutes our cab had been summoned and we were all four upon our way to London. Not a word would our captive say, but he glared at us from the shadow of his matted hair, and once, when my hand seemed within his reach, he snapped at it like a hungry wolf. We stayed long enough at the police-station to learn that a search of his clothing revealed nothing save a few shillings and a long sheath knife, the handle of which bore copious traces of recent blood.<br/>
“That’s all right,” said Lestrade, as we parted. “Hill knows all these gentry, and he will give a name to him. You’ll find that my theory of the Mafia will work out all right. But I’m sure I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Holmes, for the workmanlike way in which you laid hands upon him. I don’t quite understand it all yet.”<br/>
“I fear it is rather too late an hour for explanations,” said Holmes. “Besides, there are one or two details which are not finished off, and it is one of those cases which are worth working out to the very end. If you will come round once more to Watson’s rooms at six o’clock to-morrow, I think Molly shall be able to show you that even now you have not grasped the entire meaning of this business, which presents some features which make it absolutely original in the history of crime.”<br/>
The cab went to Baker Street first. I could clearly see that Holmes’s thoughts were elsewhere, and I detected a mixture of mingled uneasiness and expectation beneath that mask which he was wont to assume. When we arrived at 221B his eyes brightened upon seeing the figure in the doorway. I smiled and made a note to remind myself to inform Lestrade that the location of our next meeting was changed.<br/>
When we met again next evening, Lestrade was furnished with much information concerning our prisoner. His name, it appeared, was Beppo, second name unknown. He was a well-known ne’er-do-well among the Italian colony. He had once been a skillful sculptor and had earned an honest living, but he had taken to evil courses and had twice already been in jail—once for a petty theft, and once, as we had already heard, for stabbing a fellow-countryman. He could talk English perfectly well. His reasons for destroying the busts were still unknown, and he refused to answer any questions upon the subject, but the police had discovered that these same busts might very well have been made by his own hands, since he was engaged in this class of work at the establishment of Gelder &amp; Co. Then there was a ring at the bell. A minute later we heard steps upon the stairs, and an elderly red-faced man with grizzled side-whiskers was ushered in. In his right hand he carried an old-fashioned carpet-bag, which he placed upon the table.<br/>
“Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?”<br/>
My friend bowed and smiled. “Mr. Sandeford, of Reading, I suppose?” said he.<br/>
“Yes, sir, I fear that I am a little late, but the trains were awkward. You wrote to me about a bust that is in my possession.”<br/>
“Exactly.”<br/>
“I have your letter here. You said, ‘I desire to possess a copy of Devine’s Napoleon, and am prepared to pay you ten pounds for the one which is in your possession.’ Is that right?”<br/>
“Certainly.”<br/>
“I was very much surprised at your letter, for I could not imagine how you knew that I owned such a thing.”<br/>
“Of course, you must have been surprised, but the explanation is very simple. Mr. Harding, of Harding Brothers, said that they had sold you their last copy, and he gave me your address.”<br/>
“Oh, that was it, was it? Did he tell you what I paid for it?”<br/>
“No, he did not.”<br/>
“Well, I am an honest man, though not a very rich one. I only gave fifteen shillings for the bust, and I think you ought to know that before I take ten pounds from you.”<br/>
“I am sure the scruple does you honour, Mr. Sandeford. But I have named that price, so I intend to stick to it.”<br/>
“Well, it is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. I brought the bust up with me, as you asked me to do. Here it is!” He opened his bag, and at last we saw placed upon our table a complete specimen of that bust which we had already seen more than once in fragments.<br/>
Holmes took a paper from his pocket and laid a ten-pound note upon the table.<br/>
“You will kindly sign that paper, Mr. Sandeford, in the presence of these witnesses. It is simply to say that you transfer every possible right that you ever had in the bust to me. I am a methodical man, you see, and you never know what turn events might take afterwards. Thank you, Mr. Sandeford; here is your money, and I wish you a very good evening.”<br/>
When our visitor had disappeared, Sherlock Holmes’s movements were such as to rivet our attention. He began by taking a clean white cloth from a drawer and laying it over the table. Then he placed his newly acquired bust in the centre of the cloth. Finally, he picked up his hunting-crop and struck Napoleon a sharp blow on the top of the head. The figure broke into fragments, and Holmes bent eagerly over the shattered remains. Next instant, with a loud shout of triumph he held up one splinter, in which a round, dark object was fixed like a plum in a pudding.<br/>
“Gentlemen,” he cried, “let me introduce you to the famous black pearl of the Borgias.”<br/>
Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse, we both broke at clapping, as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of colour sprang to Holmes’s pale cheeks, and he gestured to Molly to curtsy like a master dramatist who ensures his star actress receives the homage of his audience. It was at such moments that for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine, and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause. The same singularly proud and reserved nature which turned away with disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being moved to its depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.<br/>
“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “it is the most famous pearl now existing in the world, and it has been my good fortune that Molly, by a connected chain of inductive reasoning, has been able to trace it from the Prince of Colonna’s bedroom at the Dacre Hotel, where it was lost, to the interior of this, the last of the six busts of Napoleon which were manufactured by Gelder &amp; Co., of Stepney. You will remember, Lestrade, the sensation caused by the disappearance of this valuable jewel and the vain efforts of the London police to recover it. I was myself consulted upon the case, but I was unable to throw any light upon it. Suspicion fell upon the maid of the Princess, who was an Italian, and it was proved that she had a brother in London, but we failed to trace any connection between them. The maid’s name was Lucretia Venucci, and there is no doubt that this Pietro who was murdered two nights ago was the brother. Look up the dates in the old files of the paper, and find that the disappearance of the pearl was exactly two days before the arrest of Beppo, for some crime of violence—an event which took place in the factory of Gelder &amp; Co., at the very moment when these busts were being made. Now you clearly see the sequence of events. Beppo had the pearl in his possession. He may have stolen it from Pietro, he may have been Pietro’s confederate, he may have been the go-between of Pietro and his sister. It is of no consequence to us which is the correct solution.<br/>
“The main fact is that he had the pearl, and at that moment, when it was on his person, he was pursued by the police. He made for the factory in which he worked, and he knew that he had only a few minutes in which to conceal this enormously valuable prize, which would otherwise be found on him when he was searched. Six plaster casts of Napoleon were drying in the passage. One of them was still soft. In an instant Beppo, a skillful workman, made a small hole in the wet plaster, dropped in the pearl, and with a few touches covered over the aperture once more. It was an admirable hiding-place. No one could possibly find it. But Beppo was condemned to a year’s imprisonment, and in the meanwhile his six busts were scattered over London. He could not tell which contained his treasure. Only by breaking them could he see. Even shaking would tell him nothing, for as the plaster was wet it was probable that the pearl would adhere to it—as, in fact, it has done. Beppo did not despair, and he conducted his search with considerable ingenuity and perseverance. Through a cousin who works with Gelder, he found out the retail firms who had bought the busts. He managed to find employment with Morse Hudson, and in that way tracked down three of them. The pearl was not there. Then, with the help of some Italian employee, he succeeded in finding out where the other three busts had gone. The first was at Harker’s. There he was dogged by his confederate, who held Beppo responsible for the loss of the pearl, and he stabbed him in the scuffle which followed.”<br/>
“If he was his confederate, why should he carry his photograph?” I asked.<br/>
“As a means of tracing him, if he wished to inquire about him from any third person. That was the obvious reason. Well, after the murder Beppo would probably hurry rather than delay his movements. He would fear that the police would read his secret, and so he hastened on before they should get ahead of him. Of course, Molly could not say that he had not found the pearl in Harker’s bust, or even that it was the pearl that he was looking for, but it was evident that he was looking for something, since he carried the bust past the other houses in order to break it in the garden which had a lamp overlooking it. Since Harker’s bust was one in three, the chances were two to one against the pearl being inside it. There remained two busts, and it was obvious that he would go for the London one first. I warned the inmates of the house, so as to avoid a second tragedy, and we went down, with the happiest results. By that time, of course, Molly and I knew for certain that it was the Borgia pearl that we were after. The name of the murdered man linked the one event with the other. There only remained a single bust—the Reading one—and the pearl must be there. I bought it in your presence from the owner—and there it lies.”<br/>
“Put the pearl in the safe, Mollylove,” said he, “and, Watson, get out the papers of the Conk-Singleton forgery case. Good-bye, Lestrade. If any little problem comes your way, my wife or I shall be happy, if we can, to give you a hint or two as to its solution.”<br/>
I will end this story with a note to my readers. These past months have been the first time I have come to regret writing these stories and thus giving my friend enough notoriety for people to be interested in his private life. I will never reveal the details of my friends’s separation, I only say now that they have reconciled.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>In this version of ACD, Watson did NOT tell the public about the fake engagement when he wrote about the Milverton case. <br/>Basil Rathbone famously played Sherlock Holmes, but I actually had The Great Mouse Detective in mind when I named the Sherlolly son. <br/>The Elementary Education Act 1870 required all children between ages 5-12 to go to school, but let's just assume that Mycroft pulled some strings so that Molly and Mary could educate their children at home. Weird facts about the Education Act, it was monumental in educating the lower classes, but it was also devastating to the preservation of Welsh culture. Also, we're never told Mycroft's political leanings, but liberals at the time were worried that the act would impinge on religious freedom since the curriculum included Anglican religion classes. Whatever Mycroft thought about the act, I suppose he figured that smart women teaching their children one-on-one was the best early education they could receive. Whew, that's a lot of historical background and headcanon simply because writing the kids going to school was too hard.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>We have had some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc. His card, which seemed too small to carry the weight of his academic distinctions, preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself—so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action, when the door had closed behind him, was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible upon the bearskin hearth-rug.<br/>We had sprung to our feet, and for a few moments we stared in silent amazement at this ponderous piece of wreckage, which told of some sudden and fatal storm far out on the ocean of life. Then Holmes hurried with a cushion for his head, and I with brandy for his lips. The heavy, white face was seamed with lines of trouble, the hanging pouches under the closed eyes were leaden in colour, the loose mouth drooped dolorously at the corners, the rolling chins were unshaven. Collar and shirt bore the grime of a long journey, and the hair bristled unkempt from the well-shaped head. It was a sorely stricken man who lay before us.<br/>“What is it, Watson?” asked Holmes.<br/>“Absolute exhaustion—possibly mere hunger and fatigue,” said I, with my finger on the thready pulse, where the stream of life trickled thin and small.<br/>“Return ticket from Mackleton, in the north of England,” said Holmes, drawing it from the watch-pocket. “It is not twelve o’clock yet. He has certainly been an early starter.”<br/>The puckered eyelids had begun to quiver, and now a pair of vacant grey eyes looked up at us. An instant later the man had scrambled on to his feet, his face crimson with shame.<br/>“Forgive this weakness, Mr. Holmes, I have been a little overwrought. Thank you, if I might have a glass of milk and a biscuit, I have no doubt that I should be better. I came personally, Mr. Holmes, in order to ensure that you would return with me. I feared that no telegram would convince you of the absolute urgency of the case.”<br/>“When you are quite restored——”<br/>“I am quite well again. I cannot imagine how I came to be so weak. I wish you, Mr. Holmes, to come to Mackleton with me by the next train.”<br/>My friend shook his head.<br/>“My colleague, Dr. Watson, could tell you that we are very busy at present. I am retained in this case of the Ferrers Documents, and the Abergavenny murder is coming up for trial. Not to mention I cannot leave my wife and two children without sufficient warning. Only a very important issue could call me from London at present.”<br/>“Important!” Our visitor threw up his hands. “Have you heard nothing of the abduction of the only son of the Duke of Holdernesse?”<br/>“What! the late Cabinet Minister?”<br/>“Exactly. We had tried to keep it out of the papers, but there was some rumour in the Globe last night. I thought it might have reached your ears.”<br/>Holmes shot out his long, thin arm and picked out Volume “H” in his encyclopædia of reference.<br/>“‘Holdernesse, 6th Duke, K.G., P.C.’—half the alphabet! ‘Baron Beverley, Earl of Carston’—dear me, what a list! ‘Lord Lieutenant of Hallamshire since 1900. Married Edith, daughter of Sir Charles Appledore, 1888. Heir and only child, Lord Saltire. Owns about two hundred and fifty thousand acres. Minerals in Lancashire and Wales. Address: Carlton House Terrace; Holdernesse Hall, Hallamshire; Carston Castle, Bangor, Wales. Lord of the Admiralty, 1872; Chief Secretary of State for——’ Well, well, this man is certainly one of the greatest subjects of the Crown!”<br/>“The greatest and perhaps the wealthiest. I am aware, Mr. Holmes, that you take a very high line in professional matters, and that you are prepared to work for the work’s sake. I may tell you, however, that his Grace has already intimated that a check for five thousand pounds will be handed over to the person who can tell him where his son is, and another thousand to him who can name the man or men who have taken him.”<br/>“It is a princely offer,” said Holmes. “Watson, I think that we shall accompany Dr. Huxtable back to the north of England. And now, Dr. Huxtable, when you have consumed that milk, you will kindly tell me what has happened, when it happened, how it happened, and, finally, what Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, of the Priory School, near Mackleton, has to do with the matter, and why he comes three days after an event—the state of your chin gives the date—to ask for my humble services.”<br/>While our visitor consumed his milk and biscuits, I composed and sent a message to Mary to inform her of the new client and to apologize for my short visit to 221B becoming an extended time away from her, Rosamunde, and little Hamish. When our new client finished his milk and biscuits, the light had come back to his eyes and the colour to his cheeks, as he set himself with great vigour and lucidity to explain the situation.<br/>“I must inform you, gentlemen, that the Priory is a preparatory school, of which I am the founder and principal. Huxtable’s Sidelights on Horace may possibly recall my name to your memories. The Priory is, without exception, the best and most select preparatory school in England. Lord Leverstoke, the Earl of Blackwater, Sir Cathcart Soames—they all have entrusted their sons to me. But I felt that my school had reached its zenith when, weeks ago, the Duke of Holdernesse sent Mr. James Wilder, his secretary, with intimation that young Lord Saltire, ten years old, his only son and heir, was about to be committed to my charge. Little did I think that this would be the prelude to the most crushing misfortune of my life.<br/>“On May 1st the boy arrived, that being the beginning of the summer term. He was a charming youth, and he soon fell into our ways. I may tell you—I trust that I am not indiscreet, but half-confidences are absurd in such a case—that he was not entirely happy at home. It is an open secret that the Duke’s married life had not been a peaceful one, and the matter had ended in a separation by mutual consent, the Duchess taking up her residence in the south of France. This had occurred very shortly before, and the boy’s sympathies are known to have been strongly with his mother. He moped after her departure from Holdernesse Hall, and it was for this reason that the Duke desired to send him to my establishment. In a fortnight the boy was quite at home with us and was apparently absolutely happy.<br/>“He was last seen on the night of May 13th—that is, the night of last Monday. His room was on the second floor and was approached through another larger room, in which two boys were sleeping. These boys saw and heard nothing, so that it is certain that young Saltire did not pass out that way. His window was open, and there is a stout ivy plant leading to the ground. We could trace no footmarks below, but it is sure that this is the only possible exit.<br/>“His absence was discovered at seven o’clock on Tuesday morning. His bed had been slept in. He had dressed himself fully, before going off, in his usual school suit of black Eton jacket and dark grey trousers. There were no signs that anyone had entered the room, and it is quite certain that anything in the nature of cries or a struggle would have been heard, since Caunter, the elder boy in the inner room, is a very light sleeper.<br/>“When Lord Saltire’s disappearance was discovered, I at once called a roll of the whole establishment—boys, masters, and servants. It was then that we ascertained that Lord Saltire had not been alone in his flight. Heidegger, the German master, was missing. His room was on the second floor, at the farther end of the building, facing the same way as Lord Saltire’s. His bed had also been slept in, but he had apparently gone away partly dressed, since his shirt and socks were lying on the floor. He had undoubtedly let himself down by the ivy, for we could see the marks of his feet where he had landed on the lawn. His bicycle was kept in a small shed beside this lawn, and it also was gone.<br/>“He had been with me for two years, and came with the best references, but he was a silent, morose man, not very popular either with masters or boys. No trace could be found of the fugitives, and now, on Thursday morning, we are as ignorant as we were on Tuesday. Inquiry was, of course, made at once at Holdernesse Hall. It is only a few miles away, and we imagined that, in some sudden attack of homesickness, he had gone back to his father, but nothing had been heard of him. The Duke is greatly agitated, and, as to me, you have seen yourselves the state of nervous prostration to which the suspense and the responsibility have reduced me. Mr. Holmes, if ever you put forward your full powers, I implore you to do so now, for never in your life could you have a case which is more worthy of them.”<br/>Sherlock Holmes had listened with the utmost intentness to the statement of the unhappy schoolmaster. His drawn brows and the deep furrow between them showed that he needed no exhortation to concentrate all his attention upon a problem which, apart from the tremendous interests involved must appeal so directly to his love of the complex and the unusual. He now drew out his notebook and jotted down one or two memoranda.<br/>“You have been very remiss in not coming to me sooner,” said he, severely. “You start me on my investigation with a very serious handicap. It is inconceivable, for example, that this ivy and this lawn would have yielded nothing to an expert observer.”<br/>“I am not to blame, Mr. Holmes. His Grace was extremely desirous to avoid all public scandal. He was afraid of his family unhappiness being dragged before the world. He has a deep horror of anything of the kind.”<br/>“But there has been some official investigation?”<br/>“Yes, sir, and it has proved most disappointing. An apparent clue was at once obtained, since a boy and a young man were reported to have been seen leaving a neighbouring station by an early train. Only last night we had news that the couple had been hunted down in Liverpool, and they prove to have no connection whatever with the matter in hand. Then it was that in my despair and disappointment, after a sleepless night, I came straight to you by the early train.”<br/>“I suppose the local investigation was relaxed while this false clue was being followed up?”<br/>“It was entirely dropped.”<br/>“So that three days have been wasted. The affair has been most deplorably handled.”<br/>“I feel it and admit it.”<br/>“And yet the problem should be capable of ultimate solution. I shall be very happy to look into it. Have you been able to trace any connection between the missing boy and this German master?”<br/>“None at all.”<br/>“Was he in the master’s class?”<br/>“No, he never exchanged a word with him, so far as I know.”<br/>“That is certainly very singular. Had the boy a bicycle?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“Was any other bicycle missing?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“Is that certain?”<br/>“Quite.”<br/>“Well, now, you do not mean to seriously suggest that this German rode off upon a bicycle in the dead of the night, bearing the boy in his arms?”<br/>“Certainly not.”<br/>“Then what is the theory in your mind?”<br/>“The bicycle may have been a blind. It may have been hidden somewhere, and the pair gone off on foot.”<br/>“Quite so, but it seems rather an absurd blind, does it not? Were there other bicycles in this shed?”<br/>“Several.”<br/>“Would he not have hidden a couple, had he desired to give the idea that they had gone off upon them?”<br/>“I suppose he would.”<br/>“Of course, he would. The blind theory won’t do. But the incident is an admirable starting-point for an investigation. After all, a bicycle is not an easy thing to conceal or to destroy. One other question. Did anyone call to see the boy on the day before he disappeared?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“Did he get any letters?”<br/>“Yes, one letter.”<br/>“From whom?”<br/>“From his father.”<br/>“Do you open the boys’ letters?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“How do you know it was from the father?”<br/>“The coat of arms was on the envelope, and it was addressed in the Duke’s peculiar stiff hand. Besides, the Duke remembers having written.”<br/>“When had he a letter before that?”<br/>“Not for several days.”<br/>“Had he ever one from France?”<br/>“No, never.<br/>“You see the point of my questions, of course. Either the boy was carried off by force or he went of his own free will. In the latter case, you would expect that some prompting from outside would be needed to make so young a lad do such a thing. If he has had no visitors, that prompting must have come in letters; hence I try to find out who were his correspondents.”<br/>“I fear I cannot help you much. His only correspondent, so far as I know, was his own father.”<br/>“Who wrote to him on the very day of his disappearance. Were the relations between father and son very friendly?”<br/>“His Grace is never very friendly with anyone. He is completely immersed in large public questions, and is rather inaccessible to all ordinary emotions. But he was always kind to the boy in his own way.”<br/>“But the sympathies of the latter were with the mother?”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“Did he say so?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“The Duke, then?”<br/>“Good Heavens, no!”<br/>“Then how could you know?”<br/>“I have had some confidential talks with Mr. James Wilder, his Grace’s secretary. It was he who gave me the information about Lord Saltire’s feelings.”<br/>“I see. By the way, that last letter of the Duke’s—was it found in the boy’s room after he was gone?”<br/>“No, he had taken it with him. I think, Mr. Holmes, it is time that we were leaving for Euston.”<br/>“I will order a four-wheeler. In a quarter of an hour, we shall be at your service. If you are telegraphing home, Mr. Huxtable, it would be well to allow the people in your neighbourhood to imagine that the inquiry is still going on in Liverpool, or wherever else that red herring led your pack. In the meantime, I will do a little quiet work at your own doors, and perhaps the scent is not so cold but that two old hounds like Watson and myself may get a sniff of it.”<br/>Despite now being married for over a decade and my familiarity with his mercury-like moods from knowing him for twice as long as that, Sherlock Holmes still strove to keep any vulnerability from being observed. But I caught sight of it as he watched little Augusta sleep. I only understood too well. Before and after meeting Sherlock Holmes I have come across many fiends, but as a parent this case was by far the most frightening, we have faced.<br/>That evening found us in the cold, bracing atmosphere of the Peak country, in which Dr. Huxtable’s famous school is situated. It was already dark when we reached it. A card was lying on the hall table, and the butler whispered something to his master, who turned to us with agitation in every heavy feature.<br/>“The Duke is here,” said he. “The Duke and Mr. Wilder are in the study. Come, gentlemen, and I will introduce you.”<br/>I was, of course, familiar with the pictures of the famous statesman, but the man himself was very different from his representation. He was a tall and stately person, scrupulously dressed, with a drawn, thin face, and a nose which was grotesquely curved and long. His complexion was of a dead pallor, which was more startling by contrast with a long, dwindling beard of vivid red, which flowed down over his white waistcoat with his watch-chain gleaming through its fringe. Such was the stately presence who looked stonily at us from the centre of Dr. Huxtable’s hearthrug. Beside him stood a very young man, whom I understood to be Wilder, the private secretary. He was small, nervous, alert with intelligent light-blue eyes and mobile features. It was he who at once, in an incisive and positive tone, opened the conversation.<br/>“I called this morning, Dr. Huxtable, too late to prevent you from starting for London. I learned that your object was to invite Mr. Sherlock Holmes to undertake the conduct of this case. His Grace is surprised, Dr. Huxtable, that you should have taken such a step without consulting him.”<br/>“When I learned that the police had failed——”<br/>“His Grace is by no means convinced that the police have failed.”<br/>“But surely, Mr. Wilder——”<br/>“You are well aware, Dr. Huxtable, that his Grace is particularly anxious to avoid all public scandal. He prefers to take as few people as possible into his confidence.”<br/>“The matter can be easily remedied,” said the brow-beaten doctor; “Mr. Sherlock Holmes can return to London by the morning train.”<br/>“Hardly that, Doctor, hardly that,” said Holmes, in his blandest voice. “This northern air is invigorating and pleasant, so I propose to spend a few days upon your moors, and to occupy my mind as best I may. Whether I have the shelter of your roof or of the village inn is, of course, for you to decide.”<br/>I could see that the unfortunate doctor was in the last stage of indecision, from which he was rescued by the deep, sonorous voice of the red-bearded Duke, which boomed out like a dinner-gong.<br/>“I agree with Mr. Wilder, Dr. Huxtable, that you would have done wisely to consult me. But since Mr. Holmes has already been taken into your confidence, it would indeed be absurd that we should not avail ourselves of his services. Far from going to the inn, Mr. Holmes, I should be pleased if you would come and stay with me at Holdernesse Hall.”<br/>“I thank your Grace. For the purposes of my investigation, I think that it would be wiser for me to remain at the scene of the mystery.”<br/>“Just as you like, Mr. Holmes. Any information which Mr. Wilder or I can give you is, of course, at your disposal.”<br/>“It will probably be necessary for me to see you at the Hall,” said Holmes. “I would only ask you now, sir, whether you have formed any explanation in your own mind as to the mysterious disappearance of your son?”<br/>“No, sir, I have not.”<br/>“Excuse me if I allude to that which is painful to you, but I have no alternative. Do you think that the Duchess had anything to do with the matter?”<br/>The great minister showed perceptible hesitation.<br/>“I do not think so,” he said, at last.<br/>“The other most obvious explanation is that the child has been kidnapped for the purpose of levying ransom. You have not had any demand of the sort?”<br/>“No, sir.”<br/>“One more question, your Grace. I understand that you wrote to your son upon the day when this incident occurred.”<br/>“No, I wrote upon the day before.”<br/>“Exactly. But he received it on that day?”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“Was there anything in your letter which might have unbalanced him or induced him to take such a step?”<br/>“No, sir, certainly not.”<br/>“Did you post that letter yourself?”<br/>The nobleman’s reply was interrupted by his secretary, who broke in with some heat.<br/>“His Grace is not in the habit of posting letters himself,” said he. “This letter was laid with others upon the study table, and I myself put them in the post-bag.”<br/>“You are sure this one was among them?”<br/>“Yes, I observed it.”<br/>“How many letters did your Grace write that day?”<br/>“Twenty or thirty. I have a large correspondence. But surely this is somewhat irrelevant?”<br/>“Not entirely,” said Holmes.<br/>“For my own part,” the Duke continued, “I have advised the police to turn their attention to the south of France. I have already said that I do not believe that the Duchess would encourage so monstrous an action, but the lad had the most wrong-headed opinions, and it is possible that he may have fled to her, aided and abetted by this German. I think, Dr. Huxtable, that we will now return to the Hall.”<br/>I could see that there were other questions which Holmes would have wished to put, but the nobleman’s abrupt manner showed that the interview was at an end. It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light into the discreetly shadowed corners of his ducal history.<br/>When the nobleman and his secretary had left, my friend flung himself at once with characteristic eagerness into the investigation.<br/>The boy’s chamber was carefully examined, and yielded nothing save the absolute conviction that it was only through the window that he could have escaped. The German master’s room and effects gave no further clue. In his case a trailer of ivy had given way under his weight, and we saw by the light of a lantern the mark on the lawn where his heels had come down. That one dint in the short, green grass was the only material witness left of this inexplicable nocturnal flight.<br/>Sherlock Holmes left the house alone, and only returned after eleven. He had obtained a large ordnance map of the neighbourhood, and this he brought into my room, where he laid it out on the bed, and, having balanced the lamp in the middle of it, he began to smoke over it, and occasionally to point out objects of interest with the reeking amber of his pipe.<br/>“This case grows upon me, Watson,” said he. “There are decidedly some points of interest in connection with it. In this early stage, I want you to realize those geographical features which may have a good deal to do with our investigation.<br/>“Look at this map. This dark square is the Priory School. I’ll put a pin in it. Now, this line is the main road. You see that it runs east and west past the school, and you see also that there is no side road for a mile either way. If these two folk passed away by road, it was this road.”<br/>“Exactly.”<br/>“By a singular and happy chance, we are able to some extent to check what passed along this road during the night in question. At this point, where my pipe is now resting, a county constable was on duty from twelve to six. It is, as you perceive, the first cross-road on the east side. This man declares that he was not absent from his post for an instant, and he is positive that neither boy nor man could have gone that way unseen. I have spoken with this policeman to-night and he appears to me to be a perfectly reliable person. That blocks this end. We have now to deal with the other. There is an inn here, the Red Bull, the landlady of which was ill. She had sent to Mackleton for a doctor, but he did not arrive until morning, being absent at another case. The people at the inn were alert all night, awaiting his coming, and one or other of them seems to have continually had an eye upon the road. They declare that no one passed. If their evidence is good, then we are fortunate enough to be able to block the west, and also to be able to say that the fugitives did not use the road at all.”<br/>“But the bicycle?” I objected.<br/>“Quite so. We will come to the bicycle presently. To continue our reasoning: if these people did not go by the road, they must have traversed the country to the north of the house or to the south of the house. That is certain. Let us weigh the one against the other. On the south of the house is, as you perceive, a large district of arable land, cut up into small fields, with stone walls between them. There, I admit that a bicycle is impossible. We can dismiss the idea. We turn to the country on the north. Here there lies a grove of trees, marked as the ‘Ragged Shaw,’ and on the farther side stretches a great rolling moor, Lower Gill Moor, extending for ten miles and sloping gradually upward. Here, at one side of this wilderness, is Holdernesse Hall, ten miles by road, but only six across the moor. It is a peculiarly desolate plain. A few moor farmers have small holdings, where they rear sheep and cattle. Except these, the plover and the curlew are the only inhabitants until you come to the Chesterfield high road. There is a church there, you see, a few cottages, and an inn. Beyond that the hills become precipitous. Surely it is here to the north that our quest must lie.”<br/>“But the bicycle?” I persisted.<br/>“Well, well!” said Holmes, impatiently. “A good cyclist does not need a high road. The moor is intersected with paths, and the moon was at the full. Halloa! what is this?”<br/>There was an agitated knock at the door, and an instant afterwards Dr. Huxtable was in the room. In his hand he held a blue cricket-cap with a white chevron on the peak.<br/>“At last, we have a clue!” he cried. “Thank heaven! at last we are on the dear boy’s track! It is his cap.”<br/>“Where was it found?”<br/>“In the van of the gipsies who camped on the moor. They left on Tuesday. To-day the police traced them down and examined their caravan. This was found.”<br/>“How do they account for it?”<br/>“They shuffled and lied—said that they found it on the moor on Tuesday morning. They know where he is, the rascals! Thank goodness, they are all safe under lock and key. Either the fear of the law or the Duke’s purse will certainly get out of them all that they know.”<br/>“So far, so good,” said Holmes, when the doctor had at last left the room. “It at least bears out the theory that it is on the side of the Lower Gill Moor that we must hope for results. The police have really done nothing locally, save the arrest of these gipsies. Look here, Watson! There is a watercourse across the moor. You see it marked here in the map. In some parts it widens into a morass. This is particularly so in the region between Holdernesse Hall and the school. It is vain to look elsewhere for tracks in this dry weather, but at that point there is certainly a chance of some record being left. I will call you early to-morrow morning, and you and I will try if we can throw some little light upon the mystery.”<br/>The day was just breaking when I woke to find the long, thin form of Holmes by my bedside. He was fully dressed, and had apparently already been out.<br/>“I have done the lawn and the bicycle shed,” said he. “I have also had a rumble through the Ragged Shaw. Now, Watson, there is cocoa ready in the next room. I must beg you to hurry, for we have a great day before us.”<br/>His eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him. A very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street. I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was indeed a strenuous day that awaited us.<br/>And yet it opened in the blackest disappointment. With high hopes we struck across the peaty, russet moor, intersected with a thousand sheep paths, until we came to the broad, light-green belt which marked the morass between us and Holdernesse. Certainly, if the lad had gone homeward, he must have passed this, and he could not pass it without leaving his traces. But no sign of him or the German could be seen. With a darkening face my friend strode along the margin, eagerly observant of every muddy stain upon the mossy surface. Sheep-marks there were in profusion, and at one place, some miles down, cows had left their tracks. Nothing more.<br/>“Check number one,” said Holmes, looking gloomily over the rolling expanse of the moor. “There is another morass down yonder, and a narrow neck between. Halloa! halloa! halloa! what have we here?”<br/>We had come on a small black ribbon of pathway. In the middle of it, clearly marked on the sodden soil, was the track of a bicycle.<br/>“Hurrah!” I cried. “We have it.”<br/>But Holmes was shaking his head, and his face was puzzled and expectant rather than joyous.<br/>“A bicycle, certainly, but not the bicycle,” said he. “I am familiar with forty-two different impressions left by tires. This, as you perceive, is a Dunlop, with a patch upon the outer cover. Heidegger’s tires were Palmer’s, leaving longitudinal stripes. Aveling, the mathematical master, was sure upon the point. Therefore, it is not Heidegger’s track.”<br/>“The boy’s, then?”<br/>“Possibly, if we could prove a bicycle to have been in his possession. But this we have utterly failed to do. This track, as you perceive, was made by a rider who was going from the direction of the school.”<br/>“Or towards it?”<br/>“No, no, my dear Watson. The more deeply sunk impression is, of course, the hind wheel, upon which the weight rests. You perceive several places where it has passed across and obliterated the more shallow mark of the front one. It was undoubtedly heading away from the school. It may or may not be connected with our inquiry, but we will follow it backwards before we go any farther.”<br/>We did so, and at the end of a few hundred yards lost the tracks as we emerged from the boggy portion of the moor. Following the path backwards, we picked out another spot, where a spring trickled across it. Here, once again, was the mark of the bicycle, though nearly obliterated by the hoofs of cows. After that there was no sign, but the path ran right on into Ragged Shaw, the wood which backed on to the school. From this wood the cycle must have emerged. Holmes sat down on a boulder and rested his chin in his hands. I had smoked two cigarettes before he moved.<br/>“Well, well,” said he, at last. “It is, of course, possible that a cunning man might change the tires of his bicycle in order to leave unfamiliar tracks. A criminal who was capable of such a thought is a man whom I should be proud to do business with. We will leave this question undecided and hark back to our morass again, for we have left a good deal unexplored.”<br/>We continued our systematic survey of the edge of the sodden portion of the moor, and soon our perseverance was gloriously rewarded. Right across the lower part of the bog lay a miry path. Holmes gave a cry of delight as he approached it. An impression like a fine bundle of telegraph wires ran down the centre of it. It was the Palmer tires.<br/>“Here is Herr Heidegger, sure enough!” cried Holmes, exultantly. “My reasoning seems to have been pretty sound, Watson.”<br/>“I congratulate you.”<br/>“But we have a long way still to go. Kindly walk clear of the path. Now let us follow the trail. I fear that it will not lead very far.”<br/>We found, however, as we advanced that this portion of the moor is intersected with soft patches, and, though we frequently lost sight of the track, we always succeeded in picking it up once more.<br/>“Do you observe,” said Holmes, “that the rider is now undoubtedly forcing the pace? There can be no doubt of it. Look at this impression, where you get both tires clear. The one is as deep as the other. That can only mean that the rider is throwing his weight on to the handle-bar, as a man does when he is sprinting. By Jove! he has had a fall.”<br/>There was a broad, irregular smudge covering some yards of the track. Then there were a few footmarks, and the tire reappeared once more.<br/>“A side-slip,” I suggested.<br/>Holmes held up a crumpled branch of flowering gorse. To my horror I perceived that the yellow blossoms were all dabbled with crimson. On the path, too, and among the heather were dark stains of clotted blood.<br/>“Bad!” said Holmes. “Bad! Stand clear, Watson! Not an unnecessary footstep! What do I read here? He fell wounded—he stood up—he remounted—he proceeded. But there is no other track. Cattle on this side path. He was surely not gored by a bull? Impossible! But I see no traces of anyone else. We must push on, Watson. Surely, with stains as well as the track to guide us, he cannot escape us now.”<br/>Our search was not a very long one. The tracks of the tire began to curve fantastically upon the wet and shining path. Suddenly, as I looked ahead, the gleam of metal caught my eye from amid the thick gorse-bushes. Out of them we dragged a bicycle, Palmer-tired, one pedal bent, and the whole front of it horribly smeared and slobbered with blood. On the other side of the bushes a shoe was projecting. We ran round, and there lay the unfortunate rider. He was a tall man, full-bearded, with spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked out. The cause of his death was a frightful blow upon the head, which had crushed in part of his skull. That he could have gone on after receiving such an injury said much for the vitality and courage of the man. He wore shoes, but no socks, and his open coat disclosed a nightshirt beneath it. It was undoubtedly the German master.<br/>Holmes turned the body over reverently, and examined it with great attention. He then sat in deep thought for a time, and I could see by his ruffled brow that this grim discovery had not, in his opinion, advanced us much in our inquiry.<br/>“It is a little difficult to know what to do, Watson,” said he, at last. “My own inclinations are to push this inquiry on, for we have already lost so much time that we cannot afford to waste another hour. On the other hand, we are bound to inform the police of the discovery, and to see that this poor fellow’s body is looked after.”<br/>“I could take a note back.”<br/>“But I need your company and assistance. Wait a bit! There is a fellow cutting peat up yonder. Bring him over here, and he will guide the police.”<br/>I brought the peasant across, and Holmes dispatched the frightened man with a note to Dr. Huxtable.<br/>“Now, Watson,” said he, “we have picked up two clues this morning. One is the bicycle with the Palmer tire, and we see what that has led to. The other is the bicycle with the patched Dunlop. Before we start to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental.”<br/>“First of all, I wish to impress upon you that the boy certainly left of his own free-will. He got down from his window and he went off, either alone or with someone. That is sure.”<br/>I assented.<br/>“Well, now, let us turn to this unfortunate German master. The boy was fully dressed when he fled. Therefore, he foresaw what he would do. But the German went without his socks. He certainly acted on very short notice.”<br/>“Undoubtedly.”<br/>“Why did he go? Because, from his bedroom window, he saw the flight of the boy, because he wished to overtake him and bring him back. He seized his bicycle, pursued the lad, and in pursuing him met his death.”<br/>“So, it would seem.”<br/>“Now I come to the critical part of my argument. The natural action of a man in pursuing a little boy would be to run after him. He would know that he could overtake him. But the German does not do so. He turns to his bicycle. I am told that he was an excellent cyclist. He would not do this, if he did not see that the boy had some swift means of escape.”<br/>“The other bicycle.”<br/>“Let us continue our reconstruction. He meets his death five miles from the school—not by a bullet, mark you, which even a lad might conceivably discharge, but by a savage blow dealt by a vigorous arm. The lad, then, had a companion in his flight. And the flight was a swift one, since it took five miles before an expert cyclist could overtake them. Yet we survey the ground round the scene of the tragedy. What do we find? A few cattle-tracks, nothing more. I took a wide sweep round, and there is no path within fifty yards. Another cyclist could have had nothing to do with the actual murder, nor were there any human foot-marks.”<br/>“Holmes,” I cried, “this is impossible.”<br/>“Admirable!” he said. “A most illuminating remark. It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?”<br/>“He could not have fractured his skull in a fall?”<br/>“In a morass, Watson?”<br/>“I am at my wits’ end.”<br/>“Tut, tut, we have solved some worse problems. At least we have plenty of material, if we can only use it. Come, then, and, having exhausted the Palmer, let us see what the Dunlop with the patched cover has to offer us.”<br/>We picked up the track and followed it onward for some distance, but soon the moor rose into a long, heather-tufted curve, and we left the watercourse behind us. No further help from tracks could be hoped for. At the spot where we saw the last of the Dunlop tire it might equally have led to Holdernesse Hall, the stately towers of which rose some miles to our left, or to a low, grey village which lay in front of us and marked the position of the Chesterfield high road.<br/>As we approached the forbidding and squalid inn, with the sign of a game-cock above the door, Holmes gave a sudden groan, and clutched me by the shoulder to save himself from falling. He had had one of those violent strains of the ankle which leave a man helpless. With difficulty he limped up to the door, where a squat, dark, elderly man was smoking a black clay pipe.<br/>“How are you, Mr. Reuben Hayes?” said Holmes.<br/>“Who are you, and how do you get my name so pat?” the countryman answered, with a suspicious flash of a pair of cunning eyes.<br/>“Well, it’s printed on the board above your head. It’s easy to see a man who is master of his own house. I suppose you haven’t such a thing as a carriage in your stables?”<br/>“No, I have not.”<br/>“I can hardly put my foot to the ground.”<br/>“Don’t put it to the ground.”<br/>“But I can’t walk.”<br/>“Well, then hop.”<br/>Mr. Reuben Hayes’s manner was far from gracious, but Holmes took it with admirable good-humour.<br/>“Look here, my man,” said he. “This is really rather an awkward fix for me. I don’t mind how I get on.”<br/>“Neither do I,” said the morose landlord.<br/>“The matter is very important. I would offer you a sovereign for the use of a bicycle.”<br/>The landlord pricked up his ears.<br/>“Where do you want to go?”<br/>“To Holdernesse Hall.”<br/>“Pals of the Dook, I suppose?” said the landlord, surveying our mud-stained garments with ironical eyes.<br/>Holmes laughed good-naturedly.<br/>“He’ll be glad to see us, anyhow.”<br/>“Why?”<br/>“Because we bring him news of his lost son.”<br/>The landlord gave a very visible start.<br/>“What, you’re on his track?”<br/>“He has been heard of in Liverpool. They expect to get him every hour.”<br/>Again, a swift change passed over the heavy, unshaven face. His manner was suddenly genial.<br/>“I’ve less reason to wish the Dook well than most men,” said he, “for I was head coachman once, and cruel bad he treated me. It was him that sacked me without a character on the word of a lying corn-chandler. But I’m glad to hear that the young lord was heard of in Liverpool, and I’ll help you to take the news to the Hall.”<br/>“Thank you,” said Holmes. “We’ll have some food first. Then you can bring round the bicycle.”<br/>“I haven’t got a bicycle.”<br/>Holmes held up a sovereign.<br/>“I tell you, man, that I haven’t got one. I’ll let you have two horses as far as the Hall.”<br/>“Well, well,” said Holmes, “we’ll talk about it when we’ve had something to eat.”<br/>When we were left alone in the stone-flagged kitchen, it was astonishing how rapidly that sprained ankle recovered. It was nearly nightfall, and we had eaten nothing since early morning, so that we spent some time over our meal. Holmes was lost in thought, and once or twice he walked over to the window and stared earnestly out. It opened on to a squalid courtyard. In the far corner was a smithy, where a grimy lad was at work. On the other side were the stables. Holmes had sat down again after one of these excursions, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with a loud exclamation.<br/>“By heaven, Watson, I believe that I’ve got it!” he cried. “Yes, yes, it must be so. Watson, do you remember seeing any cow-tracks to-day?”<br/>“Yes, several.”<br/>“Where?”<br/>“Well, everywhere. They were at the morass, and again on the path, and again near where poor Heidegger met his death.”<br/>“Exactly. Well, now, Watson, how many cows did you see on the moor?”<br/>“I don’t remember seeing any.”<br/>“Strange, Watson, that we should see tracks all along our line, but never a cow on the whole moor. Very strange, Watson, eh?”<br/>“Yes, it is strange.”<br/>“Now, Watson, make an effort, throw your mind back. Can you see those tracks upon the path?”<br/>“Yes, I can.”<br/>“Can you recall that the tracks were sometimes like that, Watson,”—he arranged a number of breadcrumbs in this fashion— “and sometimes like this” ——“and occasionally like this”— “Can you remember that?”<br/>“No, I cannot.”<br/>“But I can. I could swear to it. However, we will go back at our leisure and verify it. What a blind beetle I have been, not to draw my conclusion.”<br/>“And what is your conclusion?”<br/>“Only that it is a remarkable cow which walks, canters, and gallops. By George! Watson, it was no brain of a country publican that thought out such a blind as that. The coast seems to be clear, save for that lad in the smithy. Let us slip out and see what we can see.”<br/>There were two rough-haired, unkempt horses in the tumble-down stable. Holmes raised the hind leg of one of them and laughed aloud.<br/>“Old shoes, but newly shod—old shoes, but new nails. This case deserves to be a classic. Let us go across to the smithy.”<br/>The lad continued his work without regarding us. I saw Holmes’s eye darting to right and left among the litter of iron and wood which was scattered about the floor. Suddenly, however, we heard a step behind us, and there was the landlord, his heavy eyebrows drawn over his savage eyes, his swarthy features convulsed with passion. He held a short, metal-headed stick in his hand, and he advanced in so menacing a fashion that I was right glad to feel the revolver in my pocket.<br/>“You infernal spies!” the man cried. “What are you doing there?”<br/>“Why, Mr. Reuben Hayes,” said Holmes, coolly, “one might think that you were afraid of our finding something out.”<br/>The man mastered himself with a violent effort, and his grim mouth loosened into a false laugh, which was more menacing than his frown.<br/>“You’re welcome to all you can find out in my smithy,” said he. “But look here, mister, I don’t care for folk poking about my place without my leave, so the sooner you pay your score and get out of this the better I shall be pleased.”<br/>“All right, Mr. Hayes, no harm meant,” said Holmes. “We have been having a look at your horses, but I think I’ll walk, after all. It’s not far, I believe.”<br/>“Not more than two miles to the Hall gates. That’s the road to the left.” He watched us with sullen eyes until we had left his premises.<br/>We did not go very far along the road, for Holmes stopped the instant that the curve hid us from the landlord’s view.<br/>“We were warm, as the children say, at that inn,” said he. “I seem to grow colder every step that I take away from it. No, no, I can’t possibly leave it.”<br/>“I am convinced,” said I, “that this Reuben Hayes knows all about it. A more self-evident villain I never saw.”<br/>“Oh! he impressed you in that way, did he? There are the horses, there is the smithy. Yes, it is an interesting place, this Fighting Cock. I think we shall have another look at it in an unobtrusive way.”<br/>A long, sloping hillside, dotted with grey limestone boulders, stretched behind us. We had turned off the road, and were making our way up the hill, when, looking in the direction of Holdernesse Hall, I saw a cyclist coming swiftly along.<br/>“Get down, Watson!” cried Holmes, with a heavy hand upon my shoulder. We had hardly sunk from view when the man flew past us on the road. Amid a rolling cloud of dust, I caught a glimpse of a pale, agitated face—a face with horror in every lineament, the mouth open, the eyes staring wildly in front. It was like some strange caricature of the dapper James Wilder whom we had seen the night before.<br/>“The Duke’s secretary!” cried Holmes. “Come, Watson, let us see what he does.”<br/>We scrambled from rock to rock, until in a few moments we had made our way to a point from which we could see the front door of the inn. Wilder’s bicycle was leaning against the wall beside it. No one was moving about the house, nor could we catch a glimpse of any faces at the windows. Slowly the twilight crept down as the sun sank behind the high towers of Holdernesse Hall. Then, in the gloom, we saw the two side-lamps of a trap light up in the stable-yard of the inn, and shortly afterwards heard the rattle of hoofs, as it wheeled out into the road and tore off at a furious pace in the direction of Chesterfield.<br/>“What do you make of that, Watson?” Holmes whispered.<br/>“It looks like a flight.”<br/>“A single man in a dog-cart, so far as I could see. Well, it certainly was not Mr. James Wilder, for there he is at the door.”<br/>A red square of light had sprung out of the darkness. In the middle of it was the black figure of the secretary, his head advanced, peering out into the night. It was evident that he was expecting someone. Then at last there were steps in the road, a second figure was visible for an instant against the light, the door shut, and all was black once more. Five minutes later a lamp was lit in a room upon the first floor.<br/>“It seems to be a curious class of custom that is done by the Fighting Cock,” said Holmes.<br/>“The bar is on the other side.”<br/>“Quite so. These are what one may call the private guests. Now, what in the world is Mr. James Wilder doing in that den at this hour of night, and who is the companion who comes to meet him there? Come, Watson, we must really take a risk and try to investigate this a little more closely.”<br/>Together we stole down to the road and crept across to the door of the inn. The bicycle still leaned against the wall. Holmes struck a match and held it to the back wheel, and I heard him chuckle as the light fell upon a patched Dunlop tire. Up above us was the lighted window.<br/>“I must have a peep through that, Watson. If you bend your back and support yourself upon the wall, I think that I can manage.”<br/>An instant later, his feet were on my shoulders, but he was hardly up before he was down again.<br/>“Come, my friend,” said he, “our day’s work has been quite long enough. I think that we have gathered all that we can. It’s a long walk to the school, and the sooner we get started the better.”<br/>He hardly opened his lips during that weary trudge across the moor, nor would he enter the school when he reached it, but went on to Mackleton Station, whence he could send some telegrams. Late at night I heard him consoling Dr. Huxtable, prostrated by the tragedy of his master’s death, and later still he entered my room as alert and vigorous as he had been when he started in the morning. “All goes well, my friend,” said he. “I promise that before to-morrow evening we shall have reached the solution of the mystery.”<br/>At eleven o’clock next morning my friend and I were walking up the famous yew avenue of Holdernesse Hall. We were ushered through the magnificent Elizabethan doorway and into his Grace’s study. There we found Mr. James Wilder, demure and courtly, but with some trace of that wild terror of the night before still lurking in his furtive eyes and in his twitching features.<br/>“You have come to see his Grace? I am sorry, but the fact is that the Duke is far from well. He has been very much upset by the tragic news. We received a telegram from Dr. Huxtable yesterday afternoon, which told us of your discovery.”<br/>“I must see the Duke, Mr. Wilder.”<br/>“But he is in his room.”<br/>“Then I must go to his room.”<br/>“I believe he is in his bed.”<br/>“I will see him there.”<br/>Holmes’s cold and inexorable manner showed the secretary that it was useless to argue with him.<br/>“Very good, Mr. Holmes, I will tell him that you are here.”<br/>After an hour’s delay, the great nobleman appeared. His face was more cadaverous than ever, his shoulders had rounded, and he seemed to me to be an altogether older man than he had been the morning before. He greeted us with a stately courtesy and seated himself at his desk, his red beard streaming down on the table.<br/>“Well, Mr. Holmes?” said he.<br/>But my friend’s eyes were fixed upon the secretary, who stood by his master’s chair.<br/>“I think, your Grace, that I could speak more freely in Mr. Wilder’s absence.”<br/>The man turned a shade paler and cast a malignant glance at Holmes.<br/>“If your Grace wishes——”<br/>“Yes, yes, you had better go. Now, Mr. Holmes, what have you to say?”<br/>My friend waited until the door had closed behind the retreating secretary.<br/>“The fact is, your Grace,” said he, “that my colleague, Dr. Watson, and myself had an assurance from Dr. Huxtable that a reward had been offered in this case. I should like to have this confirmed from your own lips.”<br/>“Certainly, Mr. Holmes.”<br/>“It amounted, if I am correctly informed, to five thousand pounds to anyone who will tell you where your son is?”<br/>“Exactly.”<br/>“And another thousand to the man who will name the person or persons who keep him in custody?”<br/>“Exactly.”<br/>“Under the latter heading is included, no doubt, not only those who may have taken him away, but also those who conspire to keep him in his present position?”<br/>“Yes, yes,” cried the Duke, impatiently. “If you do your work well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you will have no reason to complain of niggardly treatment.”<br/>My friend rubbed his thin hands together with an appearance of avidity which was a surprise to me, who knew his frugal tastes.<br/>“I fancy that I see your Grace’s check-book upon the table,” said he. “I should be glad if you would make me out a check for six thousand pounds. It would be as well, perhaps, for you to cross it. The Capital and Counties Bank, Oxford Street branch are my agents.”<br/>His Grace sat very stern and upright in his chair and looked stonily at my friend.<br/>“Is this a joke, Mr. Holmes? It is hardly a subject for pleasantry.”<br/>“Not at all, your Grace. I was never more earnest in my life.”<br/>“What do you mean, then?”<br/>“I mean that I have earned the reward. I know where your son is, and I know some, at least, of those who are holding him.”<br/>The Duke’s beard had turned more aggressively red than ever against his ghastly white face.<br/>“Where is he?” he gasped.<br/>“He is, or was last night, at the Fighting Cock Inn, about two miles from your park gate.”<br/>The Duke fell back in his chair.<br/>“And whom do you accuse?”<br/>Sherlock Holmes’s answer was an astounding one. He stepped swiftly forward and touched the Duke upon the shoulder.<br/>“I accuse you,” said he. “And now, your Grace, I’ll trouble you for that check.”<br/>Never shall I forget the Duke’s appearance as he sprang up and clawed with his hands, like one who is sinking into an abyss. Then, with an extraordinary effort of aristocratic self-command, he sat down and sank his face in his hands. It was some minutes before he spoke.<br/>“How much do you know?” he asked at last, without raising his head.<br/>“I saw you together last night.”<br/>“Does anyone else beside your friend know?”<br/>“I have spoken to no one.”<br/>The Duke took a pen in his quivering fingers and opened his check-book.<br/>“I shall be as good as my word, Mr. Holmes. I am about to write your check, however unwelcome the information which you have gained may be to me. When the offer was first made, I little thought the turn which events might take. But you and your friend are men of discretion, Mr. Holmes?”<br/>“I hardly understand your Grace.”<br/>“I must put it plainly, Mr. Holmes. If only you two know of this incident, there is no reason why it should go any farther. I think twelve thousand pounds is the sum that I owe you, is it not?”<br/>But Holmes smiled and shook his head.<br/>“I fear, your Grace, that matters can hardly be arranged so easily. There is the death of this schoolmaster to be accounted for.”<br/>“But James knew nothing of that. You cannot hold him responsible for that. It was the work of this brutal ruffian whom he had the misfortune to employ.”<br/>“I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.”<br/>“Morally, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right. But surely not in the eyes of the law. A man cannot be condemned for a murder at which he was not present, and which he loathes and abhors as much as you do. The instant that he heard of it he made a complete confession to me, so filled was he with horror and remorse. He lost not an hour in breaking entirely with the murderer. Oh, Mr. Holmes, you must save him—you must save him! I tell you that you must save him!” The Duke had dropped the last attempt at self-command, and was pacing the room with a convulsed face and with his clenched hands raving in the air. At last, he mastered himself and sat down once more at his desk. “I appreciate your conduct in coming here before you spoke to anyone else,” said he. “At least, we may take counsel how far we can minimize this hideous scandal.”<br/>“Exactly,” said Holmes. “I think, your Grace, that this can only be done by absolute frankness between us. I am disposed to help your Grace to the best of my ability, but in order to do so, I must understand to the last detail how the matter stands. I realize that your words applied to Mr. James Wilder, and that he is not the murderer.”<br/>“No, the murderer has escaped.”<br/>Sherlock Holmes smiled demurely.<br/>“Your Grace can hardly have heard of any small reputation which I possess, or you would not imagine that it is so easy to escape me. Mr. Reuben Hayes was arrested at Chesterfield, on my information, at eleven o’clock last night. I had a telegram from the head of the local police before I left the school this morning.”<br/>The Duke leaned back in his chair and stared with amazement at my friend.<br/>“You seem to have powers that are hardly human,” said he. “So, Reuben Hayes is taken? I am right glad to hear it, if it will not react upon the fate of James.”<br/>“Your secretary?”<br/>“No, sir, my son.”<br/>It was Holmes’s turn to look astonished.<br/>“I confess that this is entirely new to me, your Grace. I must beg you to be more explicit.”<br/>“I will conceal nothing from you. I agree with you that complete frankness, however painful it may be to me, is the best policy in this desperate situation to which James’s folly and jealousy have reduced us. When I was a very young man, Mr. Holmes, I loved with such a love as comes only once in a lifetime. I offered the lady marriage, but she refused it on the grounds that such a match might mar my career. Had she lived; I would certainly never have married anyone else. She died, and left this one child, whom for her sake I have cherished and cared for. I could not acknowledge the paternity to the world, but I gave him the best of educations, and since he came to manhood, I have kept him near my person. He surmised my secret, and has presumed ever since upon the claim which he has upon me, and upon his power of provoking a scandal which would be abhorrent to me. His presence had something to do with the unhappy issue of my marriage. Above all, he hated my young legitimate heir from the first with a persistent hatred. You may well ask me why, under these circumstances, I still kept James under my roof. I answer that it was because I could see his mother’s face in his, and that for her dear sake there was no end to my long-suffering. All her pretty ways too—there was not one of them which he could not suggest and bring back to my memory. I could not send him away. But I feared so much lest he should do Arthur—that is, Lord Saltire—a mischief, that I dispatched him for safety to Dr. Huxtable’s school.<br/>“James came into contact with this fellow Hayes, because the man was a tenant of mine, and James acted as agent. The fellow was a rascal from the beginning, but, in some extraordinary way, James became intimate with him. He had always a taste for low company. When James determined to kidnap Lord Saltire, it was of this man’s service that he availed himself. You remember that I wrote to Arthur upon that last day. Well, James opened the letter and inserted a note asking Arthur to meet him in a little wood called the Ragged Shaw, which is near to the school. He used the Duchess’s name, and in that way got the boy to come. That evening James bicycled over—I am telling you what he has himself confessed to me—and he told Arthur, whom he met in the wood, that his mother longed to see him, that she was awaiting him on the moor, and that if he would come back into the wood at midnight, he would find a man with a horse, who would take him to her. Poor Arthur fell into the trap. He came to the appointment, and found this fellow Hayes with a led pony. Arthur mounted, and they set off together. It appears—though this James only heard yesterday—that they were pursued, that Hayes struck the pursuer with his stick, and that the man died of his injuries. Hayes brought Arthur to his public-house, the Fighting Cock, where he was confined in an upper room, under the care of Mrs. Hayes, who is a kindly woman, but entirely under the control of her brutal husband.<br/>“Well, Mr. Holmes, that was the state of affairs when I first saw you two days ago. I had no more idea of the truth than you. You will ask me what was James’s motive in doing such a deed. I answer that there was a great deal which was unreasoning and fanatical in the hatred which he bore my heir. In his view he should himself have been heir of all my estates, and he deeply resented those social laws which made it impossible. At the same time, he had a definite motive also. He was eager that I should break the entail, and he was of opinion that it lay in my power to do so. He intended to make a bargain with me—to restore Arthur if I would break the entail, and so make it possible for the estate to be left to him by will. He knew well that I should never willingly invoke the aid of the police against him. I say that he would have proposed such a bargain to me, but he did not actually do so, for events moved too quickly for him, and he had not time to put his plans into practice.<br/>“What brought all his wicked scheme to wreck was your discovery of this man Heidegger’s dead body. James was seized with horror at the news. It came to us yesterday, as we sat together in this study. Dr. Huxtable had sent a telegram. James was so overwhelmed with grief and agitation that my suspicions, which had never been entirely absent, rose instantly to a certainty, and I taxed him with the deed. He made a complete voluntary confession. Then he implored me to keep his secret for three days longer, so as to give his wretched accomplice a chance of saving his guilty life. I yielded—as I have always yielded—to his prayers, and instantly James hurried off to the Fighting Cock to warn Hayes and give him the means of flight. I could not go there by daylight without provoking comment, but as soon as night fell, I hurried off to see my dear Arthur. I found him safe and well, but horrified beyond expression by the dreadful deed he had witnessed. In deference to my promise, and much against my will, I consented to leave him there for three days, under the charge of Mrs. Hayes, since it was evident that it was impossible to inform the police where he was without telling them also who was the murderer, and I could not see how that murderer could be punished without ruin to my unfortunate James. You asked for frankness, Mr. Holmes, and I have taken you at your word, for I have now told you everything without an attempt at circumlocution or concealment. Do you in turn be as frank with me.”<br/>“I will,” said Holmes. “In the first place, your Grace, I am bound to tell you that you have placed yourself in a most serious position in the eyes of the law. You have condoned a felony, and you have aided the escape of a murderer, for I cannot doubt that any money which was taken by James Wilder to aid his accomplice in his flight came from your Grace’s purse.”<br/>The Duke bowed his assent.<br/>“This is, indeed, a most serious matter. Even more culpable in my opinion, your Grace, is your attitude towards your younger son. You leave him in this den for three days.”<br/>“Under solemn promises——”<br/>“What are promises to such people as these? You have no guarantee that he will not be spirited away again. To humour your guilty elder son, you have exposed your innocent younger son to imminent and unnecessary danger. It was a most unjustifiable action.”<br/>The proud lord of Holdernesse was not accustomed to be so rated in his own ducal hall. The blood flushed into his high forehead, but his conscience held him dumb.<br/>“I will help you, but on one condition only. It is that you ring for the footman and let me give such orders as I like.”<br/>Without a word, the Duke pressed the electric bell. A servant entered.<br/>“You will be glad to hear,” said Holmes, “that your young master is found. It is the Duke’s desire that the carriage shall go at once to the Fighting Cock Inn to bring Lord Saltire home.<br/>“Now,” said Holmes, when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared, “having secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past. I am not in an official position, and there is no reason, so long as the ends of justice are served, why I should disclose all that I know. As to Hayes, I say nothing. The gallows awaits him, and I would do nothing to save him from it. What he will divulge I cannot tell, but I have no doubt that your Grace could make him understand that it is to his interest to be silent. From the police point of view, he will have kidnapped the boy for the purpose of ransom. If they do not themselves find it out, I see no reason why I should prompt them to take a broader point of view. I would warn your Grace, however, that the continued presence of Mr. James Wilder in your household can only lead to misfortune.”<br/>“I understand that, Mr. Holmes, and it is already settled that he shall leave me forever, and go to seek his fortune in Australia.”<br/>“In that case, your Grace, since you have yourself stated that any unhappiness in your married life was caused by his presence, I would suggest that you make such amends as you can to the Duchess, and that you try to resume those relations which have been so unhappily interrupted.”<br/>“That also I have arranged, Mr. Holmes. I wrote to the Duchess this morning.”<br/>“In that case,” said Holmes, rising, “I think that my friend and I can congratulate ourselves upon several most happy results from our little visit to the North. There is one other small point upon which I desire some light. This fellow Hayes had shod his horses with shoes which counterfeited the tracks of cows. Was it from Mr. Wilder that he learned so extraordinary a device?”<br/>The Duke stood in thought for a moment, with a look of intense surprise on his face. Then he opened a door and showed us into a large room furnished as a museum. He led the way to a glass case in a corner, and pointed to the inscription.<br/>“These shoes,” it ran, “were dug up in the moat of Holdernesse Hall. They are for the use of horses, but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the track. They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages.”<br/>Holmes opened the case, and moistening his finger he passed it along the shoe. A thin film of recent mud was left upon his skin.<br/>“Thank you,” said he, as he replaced the glass. “It is the second most interesting object that I have seen in the North.”<br/>“And the first?”<br/>Holmes folded up his check and placed it carefully in his notebook. “I am a poor man,” said he, as he patted it affectionately, and thrust it into the depths of his inner pocket.<br/>“It is strange,” Holmes said upon our return to London, “That the Duke would go to such measures to protect Mr. Wilder when he couldn’t have loved him. What child would be jealous of anything as long as they had their parent’s love?”<br/>“You must admit yourself biased on this subject, Holmes.”<br/>“I admit nothing. The man, a duke, valued his career over love, teaching his son to value desires of a title over brotherly affection.”<br/>“Every man must make himself useful, and there are few men who have cared as little for society as you and Lord Hope.”<br/>“Lord Hope and I have merely called society’s bluff. We knew gossips couldn’t change our value to this country.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Yes, I gave Watson and Sherlock another kid each. Augusta is named for Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, generally acknowledged as the first detective in fiction. Conan Doyle once wrote, "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?" Watson even compared Holmes to Dupin in A Study in Scarlet, and of course Holmes said he was superior. Molly likely thought naming their daughter that would be funny, as well as just liking the name in general.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. His Last Bow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was nine o’clock at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God’s curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay. The two famous Germans stood beside the stone parapet of the garden walk, with the long, low, heavily gabled house behind them, and they looked down upon the broad sweep of the beach at the foot of the great chalk cliff in which Von Bork, like some wandering eagle, had perched himself four years before. They stood with their heads close together, talking in low, confidential tones. From below the two glowing ends of their cigars might have been the smouldering eyes of some malignant fiend looking down in the darkness.<br/>
A remarkable man this Von Bork—a man who could hardly be matched among all the devoted agents of the Kaiser. It was his talents which had first recommended him for the English mission, the most important mission of all, but since he had taken it over those talents had become more and more manifest to the half-dozen people in the world who were really in touch with the truth. One of these was his present companion, Baron Von Herling, the chief secretary of the legation, whose huge 100-horse-power Benz car was blocking the country lane as it waited to waft its owner back to London.<br/>
“So far as I can judge the trend of events, you will probably be back in Berlin within the week,” the secretary was saying. “When you get there, my dear Von Bork, I think you will be surprised at the welcome you will receive. I happen to know what is thought in the highest quarters of your work in this country.” He was a huge man, the secretary, deep, broad, and tall, with a slow, heavy fashion of speech which had been his main asset in his political career.<br/>
Von Bork laughed.<br/>
“They are not very hard to deceive,” he remarked. “A more docile, simple folk could not be imagined.”<br/>
“I don’t know about that,” said the other thoughtfully. “They have strange limits and one must learn to observe them. It is that surface simplicity of theirs which makes a trap for the stranger. One’s first impression is that they are entirely soft. Then one comes suddenly upon something very hard, and you know that you have reached the limit and must adapt yourself to the fact. They have, for example, their insular conventions which simply must be observed.”<br/>
“Meaning ‘good form’ and that sort of thing?” Von Bork sighed as one who had suffered much.<br/>
“Meaning British prejudice in all its queer manifestations. As an example, I may quote one of my own worst blunders—I can afford to talk of my blunders, for you know my work well enough to be aware of my successes. It was on my first arrival. I was invited to a week-end gathering at the country house of a cabinet minister. The conversation was amazingly indiscreet.”<br/>
Von Bork nodded. “I’ve been there,” said he dryly.<br/>
“Exactly. Well, I naturally sent a résumé of the information to Berlin. Unfortunately, our good chancellor is a little heavy-handed in these matters, and he transmitted a remark which showed that he was aware of what had been said. This, of course, took the trail straight up to me. You’ve no idea the harm that it did me. There was nothing soft about our British hosts on that occasion, I can assure you. I was two years living it down. Now you, with this sporting pose of yours—”<br/>
“No, no, don’t call it a pose. A pose is an artificial thing. This is quite natural. I am a born sportsman. I enjoy it.”<br/>
“Well, that makes it the more effective. You yacht against them, you hunt with them, you play polo, you match them in every game, your four-in-hand takes the prize at Olympia. I have even heard that you go the length of boxing with the young officers. What is the result? Nobody takes you seriously. You are a ‘good old sport’ ‘quite a decent fellow for a German,’ a hard-drinking, night-club, knock-about-town, devil-may-care young fellow. And all the time this quiet country house of yours is the centre of half the mischief in England, and the sporting squire the most astute secret-service man in Europe. Genius, my dear Von Bork—genius!”<br/>
“You flatter me, Baron. But certainly, I may claim my four years in this country have not been unproductive. I’ve never shown you my little store. Would you mind stepping in for a moment?”<br/>
The door of the study opened straight on to the terrace. Von Bork pushed it back, and, leading the way, he clicked the switch of the electric light. He then closed the door behind the bulky form which followed him and carefully adjusted the heavy curtain over the latticed window. Only when all these precautions had been taken and tested did he turn his sunburned aquiline face to his guest.<br/>
“Some of my papers have gone,” said he. “When my wife and the household left yesterday for Flushing, they took the less important with them. I must, of course, claim the protection of the embassy for the others.”<br/>
“Your name has already been filed as one of the personal suite. There will be no difficulties for you or your baggage. Of course, it is just possible that we may not have to go. England may leave France to her fate. We are sure that there is no binding treaty between them.”<br/>
“And Belgium?”<br/>
“Yes, and Belgium, too.”<br/>
Von Bork shook his head. “I don’t see how that could be. There is a definite treaty there. She could never recover from such a humiliation.”<br/>
“She would at least have peace for the moment.”<br/>
“But her honour?”<br/>
“Tut, my dear sir, we live in a utilitarian age. Honour is a medieval conception. Besides England is not ready. It is an inconceivable thing, but even our special war tax of fifty million, which one would think made our purpose as clear as if we had advertised it on the front page of the Times, has not roused these people from their slumbers. Here and there one hears a question. It is my business to find an answer. Here and there also there is an irritation. It is my business to soothe it. But I can assure you that so far as the essentials go—the storage of munitions, the preparation for submarine attack, the arrangements for making high explosives—nothing is prepared. How, then, can England come in, especially when we have stirred her up such a devil’s brew of Irish civil war, window-breaking Furies, and God knows what to keep her thoughts at home.”<br/>
“She must think of her future.”<br/>
“Ah, that is another matter. I fancy that in the future we have our own very definite plans about England, and that your information will be very vital to us. It is to-day or to-morrow with Mr. John Bull. If he prefers to-day we are perfectly ready. If it is to-morrow we shall be more ready still. I should think they would be wiser to fight with allies than without them, but that is their own affair. This week is their week of destiny. But you were speaking of your papers.” He sat in the armchair with the light shining upon his broad bald head, while he puffed sedately at his cigar.<br/>
The large oak-paneled, book-lined room had a curtain hung in the further corner. When this was drawn it disclosed a large, brass-bound safe. Von Bork detached a small key from his watch chain, and after some considerable manipulation of the lock he swung open the heavy door.<br/>
“Look!” said he, standing clear, with a wave of his hand.<br/>
The light shone vividly into the opened safe, and the secretary of the embassy gazed with an absorbed interest at the rows of stuffed pigeon-holes with which it was furnished. Each pigeon-hole had its label, and his eyes as he glanced along them read a long series of such titles as “Fords,” “Harbour-defences,” “Aeroplanes,” “Ireland,” “Egypt,” “Portsmouth forts,” “The Channel,” “Rosythe,” and a score of others. Each compartment was bristling with papers and plans.<br/>
“Colossal!” said the secretary. Putting down his cigar he softly clapped his fat hands.<br/>
“And all in four years, Baron. Not such a bad show for the hard-drinking, hard-riding country squire. But the gem of my collection is coming and there is the setting all ready for it.” He pointed to a space over which “Naval Signals” was printed.<br/>
“But you have a good dossier there already.”<br/>
“Out of date and waste paper. The Admiralty in some way got the alarm and every code has been changed. It was a blow, Baron—the worst setback in my whole campaign. But thanks to my check-book and the good Altamont all will be well to-night.”<br/>
The Baron looked at his watch and gave a guttural exclamation of disappointment.<br/>
“Well, I really can wait no longer. You can imagine that things are moving at present in Carlton Terrace and that we have all to be at our posts. I had hoped to be able to bring news of your great coup. Did Altamont name no hour?”<br/>
Von Bork pushed over a telegram.<br/>
Will come without fail to-night and bring new sparking plugs. —ALTAMONT.<br/>
“Sparking plugs, eh?”<br/>
“You see he poses as a motor expert and I keep a full garage. In our code everything likely to come up is named after some spare part. If he talks of a radiator it is a battleship, of an oil pump a cruiser, and so on. Sparking plugs are naval signals.”<br/>
“From Portsmouth at midday,” said the secretary, examining the superscription. “By the way, what do you give him?”<br/>
“Five hundred pounds for this particular job. Of course, he has a salary as well.”<br/>
“The greedy rogue. They are useful, these traitors, but I grudge them their blood money.”<br/>
“I grudge Altamont nothing. He is a wonderful worker. If I pay him well, at least he delivers the goods, to use his own phrase. Besides he is not a traitor. I assure you that our most pan-Germanic Junker is a sucking dove in his feelings towards England as compared with a real bitter Irish-American.”<br/>
“Oh, an Irish-American?”<br/>
“If you heard him talk you would not doubt it. Sometimes I assure you I can hardly understand him. He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king. Must you really go? He may be here any moment.”<br/>
“No. I’m sorry, but I have already overstayed my time. We shall expect you early to-morrow, and when you get that signal book through the little door on the Duke of York’s steps you can put a triumphant Finis to your record in England. What! Tokay!” He indicated a heavily sealed dust-covered bottle which stood with two high glasses upon a salver.<br/>
“May I offer you a glass before your journey?”<br/>
“No, thanks. But it looks like revelry.”<br/>
“Altamont has a nice taste in wines, and he took a fancy to my Tokay. He is a touchy fellow and needs humouring in small things. I have to study him, I assure you.” They had strolled out on to the terrace again, and along it to the further end where at a touch from the Baron’s chauffeur the great car shivered and chuckled. “Those are the lights of Harwich, I suppose,” said the secretary, pulling on his dust coat. “How still and peaceful it all seems. There may be other lights within the week, and the English coast a less tranquil place! The heavens, too, may not be quite so peaceful if all that the good Zepplin promises us comes true. By the way, who is that?”<br/>
Only one window showed a light behind them; in it there stood a lamp, and beside it, seated at a table, was a dear old ruddy-faced woman in a country cap. She was bending over her knitting and stopping occasionally to stroke a large black cat upon a stool beside her.<br/>
“That is Martha, the only servant I have left.”<br/>
The secretary chuckled.<br/>
“She might almost personify Britannia,” said he, “with her complete self-absorption and general air of comfortable somnolence. Well, au revoir, Von Bork!” With a final wave of his hand, he sprang into the car, and a moment later the two golden cones from the headlights shot through the darkness. The secretary lay back in the cushions of the luxurious limousine, with his thoughts so full of the impending European tragedy that he hardly observed that as his car swung round the village street it nearly passed over a little Ford coming in the opposite direction.<br/>
Von Bork walked slowly back to the study when the last gleams of the motor lamps had faded into the distance. As he passed, he observed that his old housekeeper had put out her lamp and retired. It was a new experience to him, the silence and darkness of his widespread house, for his family and household had been a large one. It was a relief to him, however, to think that they were all in safety and that, but for that one old woman who had lingered in the kitchen, he had the whole place to himself. There was a good deal of tidying up to do inside his study and he set himself to do it until his keen, handsome face was flushed with the heat of the burning papers. A leather valise stood beside his table, and into this he began to pack very neatly and systematically the precious contents of his safe. He had hardly got started with the work, however, when his quick ears caught the sounds of a distant car. Instantly he gave an exclamation of satisfaction, strapped up the valise, shut the safe, locked it, and hurried out on to the terrace. He was just in time to see the lights of a small car come to a halt at the gate. A passenger sprang out of it and advanced swiftly towards him, while the chauffeur, a heavily built, elderly man with a grey moustache, settled down like one who resigns himself to a long vigil.<br/>
“Well?” asked Von Bork eagerly, running forward to meet his visitor.<br/>
For answer the man waved a small brown-paper parcel triumphantly above his head.<br/>
“You can give me the glad hand to-night, mister,” he cried. “I’m bringing home the bacon at last.”<br/>
“The signals?”<br/>
“Same as I said in my cable. Every last one of them, semaphore, lamp code, Marconi—a copy, mind you, not the original. That was too dangerous. But it’s the real goods, and you can lay to that.” He slapped the German upon the shoulder with a rough familiarity from which the other winced.<br/>
“Come in,” he said. “I’m all alone in the house. I was only waiting for this. Of course, a copy is better than the original. If an original were missing, they would change the whole thing. You think it’s all safe about the copy?”<br/>
The Irish-American had entered the study and stretched his long limbs from the armchair. He was a tall, gaunt man of sixty, with clear-cut features and a small goatee beard which gave him a general resemblance to the caricatures of Uncle Sam. A half-smoked, sodden cigar hung from the corner of his mouth, and as he sat down, he struck a match and relit it. “Making ready for a move?” he remarked as he looked round him. “Say, mister,” he added, as his eyes fell upon the safe from which the curtain was now removed, “you don’t tell me you keep your papers in that?”<br/>
“Why not?”<br/>
“Gosh, in a wide-open contraption like that! And they reckon you to be some spy. Why, a Yankee crook would be into that with a can-opener. If I’d known that any letter of mine was goin’ to lie loose in a thing like that, I’d have been a mug to write to you at all.”<br/>
“It would puzzle any crook to force that safe,” Von Bork answered. “You won’t cut that metal with any tool.”<br/>
“But the lock?”<br/>
“No, it’s a double combination lock. You know what that is?”<br/>
“Search me,” said the American.<br/>
“Well, you need a word as well as a set of figures before you can get the lock to work.” He rose and showed a double-radiating disc round the keyhole. “This outer one is for the letters, the inner one for the figures.”<br/>
“Well, well, that’s fine.”<br/>
“So, it’s not quite as simple as you thought. It was four years ago that I had it made, and what do you think I chose for the word and figures?”<br/>
“It’s beyond me.”<br/>
“Well, I chose August for the word, and 1914 for the figures, and here we are.”<br/>
The American’s face showed his surprise and admiration.<br/>
“My, but that was smart! You had it down to a fine thing.”<br/>
“Yes, a few of us even then could have guessed the date. Here it is, and I’m shutting down to-morrow morning.”<br/>
“Well, I guess you’ll have to fix me up also. I’m not staying in this goldarned country all on my lonesome. In a week or less, from what I see, John Bull will be on his hind legs and fair ramping. I’d rather watch him from over the water.”<br/>
“But you’re an American citizen?”<br/>
“Well, so was Jack James an American citizen, but he’s doing time in Portland all the same. It cuts no ice with a British copper to tell him you’re an American citizen. ‘It’s British law and order over here,’ says he. By the way, mister, talking of Jack James, it seems to me you don’t do much to cover your men.”<br/>
“What do you mean?” Von Bork asked sharply.<br/>
“Well, you are their employer, ain’t you? It’s up to you to see that they don’t fall down. But they do fall down, and when did you ever pick them up? There’s James—”<br/>
“It was James’s own fault. You know that yourself. He was too self-willed for the job.”<br/>
“James was a bonehead—I give you that. Then there was Hollis.”<br/>
“The man was mad.”<br/>
“Well, he went a bit woozy towards the end. It’s enough to make a man bug-house when he has to play a part from morning to night with a hundred guys all ready to set the coppers wise to him. But now there is Steiner—”<br/>
Von Bork started violently, and his ruddy face turned a shade paler.<br/>
“What about Steiner?”<br/>
“Well, they’ve got him, that’s all. They raided his store last night, and he and his papers are all in Portsmouth jail. You’ll go off and he, poor devil, will have to stand the racket, and lucky if he gets off with his life. That’s why I want to get over the water as soon as you do.”<br/>
Von Bork was a strong, self-contained man, but it was easy to see that the news had shaken him.<br/>
“How could they have got on to Steiner?” he muttered. “That’s the worst blow yet.”<br/>
“Well, you nearly had a worse one, for I believe they are not far off me.”<br/>
“You don’t mean that!”<br/>
“Sure thing. My landlady down Fratton way had some inquiries, and when I heard of it, I guessed it was time for me to hustle. But what I want to know, mister, is how the coppers know these things? Steiner is the fifth man you’ve lost since I signed on with you, and I know the name of the sixth if I don’t get a move on. How do you explain it, and ain’t you ashamed to see your men go down like this?”<br/>
Von Bork flushed crimson.<br/>
“How dare you speak in such a way!”<br/>
“If I didn’t dare things, mister, I wouldn’t be in your service. But I’ll tell you straight what is in my mind. I’ve heard that with you German politicians when an agent has done his work you are not sorry to see him put away.”<br/>
Von Bork sprang to his feet.<br/>
“Do you dare to suggest that I have given away my own agents!”<br/>
“I don’t stand for that, mister, but there’s a stool pigeon or a cross somewhere, and it’s up to you to find out where it is. Anyhow I am taking no more chances. It’s me for little Holland, and the sooner the better.”<br/>
Von Bork had mastered his anger.<br/>
“We have been allies too long to quarrel now at the very hour of victory,” he said. “You’ve done splendid work and taken risks, and I can’t forget it. By all means go to Holland, and you can get a boat from Rotterdam to New York. No other line will be safe a week from now. I’ll take that book and pack it with the rest.”<br/>
The American held the small parcel in his hand, but made no motion to give it up.<br/>
“What about the dough?” he asked.<br/>
“The what?”<br/>
“The boodle. The reward. The £500. The gunner turned damned nasty at the last, and I had to square him with an extra hundred dollars or it would have been nitsky for you and me. ‘Nothin’ doin’!’ says he, and he meant it, too, but the last hundred did it. It’s cost me two hundred pound from first to last, so it isn’t likely I’d give it up without gettin’ my wad.”<br/>
Von Bork smiled with some bitterness. “You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of my honour,” said he, “you want the money before you give up the book.”<br/>
“Well, mister, it is a business proposition.”<br/>
“All right. Have your way.” He sat down at the table and scribbled a check, which he tore from the book, but he refrained from handing it to his companion. “After all, since we are to be on such terms, Mr. Altamont,” said he, “I don’t see why I should trust you any more than you trust me. Do you understand?” he added, looking back over his shoulder at the American. “There’s the check upon the table. I claim the right to examine that parcel before you pick the money up.”<br/>
The American passed it over without a word. Von Bork undid a winding of string and two wrappers of paper. Then he sat gazing for a moment in silent amazement at a small blue book which lay before him. Across the cover was printed in golden letters Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. Only for one instant did the master spy glare at this strangely irrelevant inscription. The next he was gripped at the back of his neck by a grasp of iron, and a chloroformed sponge was held in front of his writhing face.<br/>
“Another glass, Watson!” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes as he extended the bottle of Imperial Tokay.<br/>
The thickset chauffeur, who had seated himself by the table, pushed forward his glass with some eagerness.<br/>
“It is a good wine, Holmes.”<br/>
“A remarkable wine, Watson. Our friend upon the sofa has assured me that it is from Franz Josef’s special cellar at the Schoenbrunn Palace. Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapour does not help the palate.”<br/>
The safe was ajar, and Holmes standing in front of it was removing dossier after dossier, swiftly examining each, and then packing it neatly in Von Bork’s valise. The German lay upon the sofa sleeping stertorously with a strap round his upper arms and another round his legs.<br/>
“We need not hurry ourselves, Watson. We are safe from interruption. Would you mind touching the bell? There is no one in the house except old Martha, who has played her part to admiration. I got her the situation here when first I took the matter up. Ah, Martha, you will be glad to hear that all is well.”<br/>
The pleasant old lady had appeared in the doorway. She curtseyed with a smile to Mr. Holmes, but glanced with some apprehension at the figure upon the sofa.<br/>
“It is all right, Martha. He has not been hurt at all.”<br/>
“I am glad of that, Mr. Holmes. According to his lights he has been a kind master. He wanted me to go with his wife to Germany yesterday, but that would hardly have suited your plans, would it, sir?”<br/>
“No, indeed, Martha. So long as you were here, I was easy in my mind. We waited some time for your signal to-night.”<br/>
“It was the secretary, sir.”<br/>
“I know. His car passed ours.”<br/>
“I thought he would never go. I knew that it would not suit your plans, sir, to find him here.”<br/>
“No, indeed. Well, it only meant that we waited half an hour or so until I saw your lamp go out and knew that the coast was clear. You can report to me to-morrow in London, Martha, at Claridge’s Hotel.”<br/>
“Very good, sir.”<br/>
“I suppose you have everything ready to leave.”<br/>
“Yes, sir. He posted seven letters to-day. I have the addresses as usual.”<br/>
“Very good, Martha. I will look into them to-morrow. Good-night. These papers,” he continued as the old lady vanished, “are not of very great importance, for, of course, the information which they represent has been sent off long ago to the German government. These are the originals which could not safely be got out of the country.”<br/>
“Then they are of no use.”<br/>
“I should not go so far as to say that, Watson. They will at least show our people what is known and what is not. I may say that a good many of these papers have come through me, and I need not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans which I have furnished. But you, Watson”—he stopped his work and took his old friend by the shoulders— “I’ve hardly seen you in the light yet. How have the years used you? You look the same blithe boy as ever.”<br/>
“I feel twenty years younger, Holmes. I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you at Harwich with the car. But you, Holmes—you have changed very little—save for that horrible goatee.”<br/>
“Yes, Molly doesn’t like it either, but these are the sacrifices one makes for one’s country, Watson,” said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. “To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory. With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge’s to-morrow as I was before this American stunt—I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled—before this American job came my way.”<br/>
“But you have retired, Holmes, living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books on that small farm upon the South Downs.”<br/>
“Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!” He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. “Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once, I watched the criminal world of London.”<br/>
“And here I thought your secret project was this undercover business. But how did you get to work again?”<br/>
“Ah, I have often marveled at it myself. The Foreign Minister alone I could have withstood, but when the Premier also deigned to visit my humble roof—! The fact is, Watson, that this gentleman upon the sofa was a bit too good for our people. He was in a class by himself. Things were going wrong, and no one could understand why they were going wrong. Agents were suspected or even caught, but there was evidence of some strong and secret central force. It was absolutely necessary to expose it. Strong pressure was brought upon me to look into the matter. It has cost me two years, Watson, but they have not been devoid of excitement. When I say that I started my pilgrimage at Chicago, graduated in an Irish secret society at Buffalo, gave serious trouble to the constabulary at Skibbareen, and so eventually caught the eye of a subordinate agent of Von Bork, who recommended me as a likely man, you will realise that the matter was complex. Since then, I have been honoured by his confidence, which has not prevented most of his plans going subtly wrong and five of his best agents being in prison. I watched them, Watson, and I picked them as they ripened. Well, sir, I hope that you are none the worse!”<br/>
The last remark was addressed to Von Bork himself, who after much gasping and blinking had lain quietly listening to Holmes’s statement. He broke out now into a furious stream of German invective, his face convulsed with passion. Holmes continued his swift investigation of documents while his prisoner cursed and swore.<br/>
“Though unmusical, German is the most expressive of all languages,” he observed when Von Bork had stopped from pure exhaustion. “Hullo! Hullo!” he added as he looked hard at the corner of a tracing before putting it in the box. “This should put another bird in the cage. I had no idea that the paymaster was such a rascal, though I have long had an eye upon him. Mister Von Bork, you have a great deal to answer for.”<br/>
The prisoner had raised himself with some difficulty upon the sofa and was staring with a strange mixture of amazement and hatred at his captor.<br/>
“I shall get level with you, Altamont,” he said, speaking with slow deliberation. “If it takes me all my life, I shall get level with you!”<br/>
“The old sweet song,” said Holmes. “How often have I heard it in days gone by. It was a favorite ditty of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran has also been known to warble it. And yet I live and keep bees upon the South Downs.”<br/>
“Curse you, you double traitor!” cried the German, straining against his bonds and glaring murder from his furious eyes.<br/>
“No, no, it is not so bad as that,” said Holmes, smiling. “As my speech surely shows you, Mr. Altamont of Chicago had no existence in fact. I used him and he is gone.”<br/>
“Then who are you?”<br/>
“It is really immaterial who I am, but since the matter seems to interest you, Mr. Von Bork, I may say that this is not my first acquaintance with the members of your family. I have done a good deal of business in Germany in the past and my name is probably familiar to you.”<br/>
“I would wish to know it,” said the Prussian grimly.<br/>
“It was I who brought about the separation between Irene Adler and the late King of Bohemia when your cousin Heinrich was the Imperial Envoy. It was I also who saved from murder, by the Nihilist Klopman, Count Von und Zu Grafenstein, who was your mother’s elder brother. It was I—”<br/>
Von Bork sat up in amazement.<br/>
“There is only one man,” he cried.<br/>
“Exactly,” said Holmes.<br/>
Von Bork groaned and sank back on the sofa. “And most of that information came through you,” he cried. “What is it worth? What have I done? It is my ruin forever!”<br/>
“It is certainly a little untrustworthy,” said Holmes. “It will require some checking and you have little time to check it. Your admiral may find the new guns rather larger than he expects, and the cruisers perhaps a trifle faster.”<br/>
Von Bork clutched at his own throat in despair.<br/>
“There are a good many other points of detail which will, no doubt, come to light in good time. But you have one quality which is very rare in a German, Mr. Von Bork: you are a sportsman and you will bear me no ill-will when you realise that you, who have outwitted so many other people, have at last been outwitted yourself. After all, you have done your best for your country, and I have done my best for mine, and what could be more natural? Besides,” he added, not unkindly, as he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the prostrate man, “it is better than to fall before some ignoble foe. These papers are now ready, Watson. If you will help me with our prisoner, I think that we may get started for London at once.”<br/>
It was no easy task to move Von Bork, for he was a strong and a desperate man. Finally, holding either arm, the two friends walked him very slowly down the garden walk which he had trod with such proud confidence when he received the congratulations of the famous diplomatist only a few hours before. After a short, final struggle he was hoisted, still bound hand and foot, into the spare seat of the little car. His precious valise was wedged in beside him.<br/>
“I trust that you are as comfortable as circumstances permit,” said Holmes when the final arrangements were made. “Should I be guilty of a liberty if I lit a cigar and placed it between your lips?”<br/>
But all amenities were wasted upon the angry German.<br/>
“I suppose you realise, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said he, “that if your government bears you out in this treatment it becomes an act of war.”<br/>
“What about your government and all this treatment?” said Holmes, tapping the valise.<br/>
“You are a private individual. You have no warrant for my arrest. The whole proceeding is absolutely illegal and outrageous.”<br/>
“Absolutely,” said Holmes.<br/>
“Kidnapping a German subject.”<br/>
“And stealing his private papers.”<br/>
“Well, you realise your position, you and your accomplice here. If I were to shout for help as we pass through the village—”<br/>
“My dear sir, if you did anything so foolish you would probably enlarge the two limited titles of our village inns by giving us ‘The Dangling Prussian’ as a signpost. The Englishman is a patient creature, but at present his temper is a little inflamed, and it would be as well not to try him too far. No, Mr. Von Bork, you will go with us in a quiet, sensible fashion to Scotland Yard, whence you can send for your friend, Baron Von Herling, and see if even now you may not fill that place which he has reserved for you in the ambassadorial suite. As to you, Watson, you are joining us with your old service, as I understand, so London won’t be out of your way.”<br/>
The two friends chatted in intimate converse for a few minutes, while their prisoner vainly wriggled to undo the bonds that held him. As they turned to the car Holmes pointed back to the moonlit sea and shook a thoughtful head.<br/>
“There’s an east wind coming, Watson.”<br/>
“I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.”<br/>
“Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson, for it’s time that we were on our way. I have a check for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it if he can.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sherlock retired around 1904, probably after sending Basil to boarding school, so Augusta grew up in the country like her mother did, likely running wild and doing science to her heart’s content like her mother too. By the time of this story, Sherlock and Molly have been married for 23 years, Basil would be 19 (and I have plans for him), and Augusta would be 13. John and Mary have been married for 26 years. Rosamunde would be 22, a teacher like her mother, but would probably become a nurse once the war officially breaks out. Hamish would be 13 and have a massive crush on Augusta.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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